Global Witness

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Very Bad People: The Inside Story of the Fight Against the World’s Network of Corruption by Patrick Alley

airport security, blood diamond, book value, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, Cambridge Analytica, clean water, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, Donald Trump, energy security, failed state, fake news, Global Witness, lockdown, offshore financial centre, pre–internet, satellite internet, Steve Bannon, Ted Sorensen

Hun Neng, former governor of Cambodia’s Kampong Cham Province and brother of Prime Minister Hun Sen British Espionage Teams on Mission to Discredit Zimbabwe. Story about Global Witness investigation, the Herald, 14 May 2001 Global Witness? I call them blind witness. President Paul Kagame of Rwanda Is Global Witness above the law? Spokesman for Beny Steinmetz Group Resources, shortly before losing a legal case they had brought against Global Witness It was very naughty of them…using their big power to blacken my name. They’re trying to frame people like me. Taib Mahmud, chief minister of Sarawak Global Witness, Global Deceitful, Global Lies. Catholic priest Miguel Piovesan, after Global Witness uncovered his links to illegal logging in Peru’s last reserve for uncontactable tribes Global Witness are amateurish to the point of bogus.

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TESTIMONIALS Global Witness is part of a global Machiavellian plot. MPLA government, Angola Global Witness is just a bunch of well-intentioned hooligans. Diamond-industry official quoted in Poisoned Wells, by Nick Shaxson Global Witness is an enemy of the state. General Salim Saleh, brother of Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni Global Witness are worse than the Khmer Rouge. Prime Minister Hun Sen of Cambodia I will hit them until their heads are broken. Hun Neng, former governor of Cambodia’s Kampong Cham Province and brother of Prime Minister Hun Sen British Espionage Teams on Mission to Discredit Zimbabwe.

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William Shakespeare, King Lear, Act 3, Scene 4 FOREWORD By George Soros My foundation has long been involved in promoting transparency and fighting corruption. Global Witness is one of the most effective and innovative groups working in this area. Global Witness first came to my attention in the early 2000s. More or less uniquely at the time, Global Witness focused on the nexus between human-rights abuses and environmental destruction, paying particular attention to the links between natural-resource exploitation, conflict and corruption. I first met Global Witness’s three young founders at my home in London. We were introduced by the then president of the Open Society Foundations, Aryeh Neier.

Poisoned Wells: The Dirty Politics of African Oil by Nicholas Shaxson

Alan Greenspan, Asian financial crisis, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, blood diamond, business climate, clean water, colonial rule, energy security, Exxon Valdez, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial engineering, Global Witness, Great Leap Forward, Hernando de Soto, income per capita, inflation targeting, Kickstarter, low interest rates, Martin Wolf, military-industrial complex, mobile money, Nelson Mandela, offshore financial centre, oil-for-food scandal, old-boy network, Ronald Reagan, Scramble for Africa, Tragedy of the Commons, Yom Kippur War, zero-sum game

“The diamond wars were the secret of the diamond trade until, quite suddenly, they were not,” wrote the diamond commentator Matthew Hart.2 “It seemed to happen in an instant, as if a curtain had been ripped aside and there was the diamond business, spattered with blood, sorting through the goods. Its accuser was a little-known group called Global Witness.” Diamond industry officials I spoke to were furious. Global Witness was crazy; they were naive; they were left-wing sandal-wearing idiots; they had no right. “Global Witness,” said one, “is just a bunch of wellintentioned hooligans.” A Rough Trade was one of the founding documents for the now-famous international campaign against “blood diamonds,” which upended the global diamond industry, and brought governments together in search of solutions. I have chosen to write about Global Witness partly because I don’t want to give anyone an impression that I have been alone in delving into 210 Global Witness this queer world, and partly because their story presents a chance to appraise current western approaches to tackling problems associated with Africa’s oil.

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He made a sneering contrast with “one company which has run into deep trouble.”9 Yet the episode still represented progress, of sorts. Global Witness pushed ahead, expanding on the somewhat rough-and-ready, outraged A Crude Awakening and beginning a wider dialogue with governments and oil companies.10 Sonangol’s BP backlash showed that companies would not stick out their necks and publish data alone, so Global Witness shifted its aim away from companies and toward western legislators and regulators. In June 2002 the billionaire investor George Soros11 joined Global Witness to set 216 Global Witness up the Publish What You Pay coalition, to ask for oil companies to be forced by western laws or regulation to disclose payments to all governments where they operate.

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Denis Sassou Nguesso, “L’Afrique, le Congo, et lui,” Jeune Afrique, February 19–25, 2006. Global Witness, Time for Transparency, page 31. Letter was in 2002. From Global Witness, Time for Transparency, page 19. From sources in Brazzaville, November 2003; also described in Global Witness, Time for Transparency, page 33. For a good description of this, see Petroleum and Politics in the Gulf of Guinea by Ricardo Soares, Cambridge University (U.K.), May 2005, Chapter 2. Médécins sans frontières—Holland. According to a doctor from Médécins sans frontières, in October 2003. See, for example, Global Witness, Time for Transparency, page 25, and “Cleaned out,” Africa Confidential, December 5, 2003.

Spooked: The Trump Dossier, Black Cube, and the Rise of Private Spies by Barry Meier

Airbnb, business intelligence, citizen journalism, Citizen Lab, commoditize, coronavirus, corporate raider, COVID-19, digital map, disinformation, Donald Trump, fake news, false flag, forensic accounting, global pandemic, Global Witness, index card, Jeffrey Epstein, Julian Assange, Londongrad, medical malpractice, NSO Group, offshore financial centre, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Ponzi scheme, Ronald Reagan, Russian election interference, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, SoftBank, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Jobs, WikiLeaks

GLENN SIMPSON AND CHRISTOPHER Steele were introduced by a mutual acquaintance, Alex Yearsley, who had also just become a private operative. Previously, Yearsley had worked as the director for special projects at Global Witness, an anticorruption group based in London whose financial supporters included the billionaire investor George Soros. Global Witness has long specialized in exposing bribes paid to politicians in developing regions such as Africa by companies eager to exploit a country’s oil, mineral wealth, or other natural resources. Simpson had gotten to know Global Witness during his time as a Journal reporter in Europe. The organization frequently collaborated with news organizations and, in the mid-2000s, it began investigating an obscure company in Ukraine that was involved in the operation of a major natural gas pipeline that supplied energy to Western Europe.

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Moore would later say that the executive explained that prosecutors in several countries were investigating whether two energy giants—Shell, a Dutch company, and Eni, an Italian firm—had bribed officials in Nigeria to win drilling rights there. Moore was told that Global Witness, the anticorruption group, had first uncovered evidence of the suspected payoffs and was now working with prosecutors to develop their cases. The K2 Intelligence executive wanted to know, Moore said, if he was interested in donning his guise as an investigative journalist and infiltrating Global Witness in order to learn where the investigations were heading. Soon afterward, Moore was in a London courtroom observing a hearing connected to the Nigerian case. When it ended, he approached a Global Witness official and introduced himself as a journalist and a filmmaker.

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When it ended, he approached a Global Witness official and introduced himself as a journalist and a filmmaker. “I’ve got a story that I think might be of interest to Global Witness, actually two, and I would love to get your thoughts on who I should be talking to,” Moore wrote in a follow-up email. ROB MOORE KNEW THAT Global Witness had a tradition of working with whistleblowers who had information about suspected corporate and political corruption. His idea was a twist on that theme. He would tell Global Witness that K2 Intelligence wanted him to spy on it and then offer to act as a double agent who would keep the group informed about what the firm’s client wanted him to find out.

The Looting Machine: Warlords, Oligarchs, Corporations, Smugglers, and the Theft of Africa's Wealth by Tom Burgis

Airbus A320, Berlin Wall, blood diamond, BRICs, British Empire, central bank independence, clean water, colonial rule, corporate social responsibility, crony capitalism, Deng Xiaoping, Donald Trump, F. W. de Klerk, financial engineering, flag carrier, Gini coefficient, Global Witness, Livingstone, I presume, McMansion, megacity, megaproject, Nelson Mandela, offshore financial centre, oil shock, open economy, purchasing power parity, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, structural adjustment programs, trade route, transfer pricing, upwardly mobile, urban planning, Washington Consensus, WikiLeaks, zero-sum game

Fidel Bafilemba, Timo Mueller and Sasha Lezhnev, ‘The Impact of Dodd–Frank and Conflict Minerals Reforms on Eastern Congo’s War’, Enough Project, June 2014, www.enoughproject.org/reports/​impact-dodd-frank-and-conflict-minerals-​reforms-eastern-congo​%E2%80%99s-war. 87. ‘As June 2nd Conflict Minerals Deadline Approaches, Global Witness Warns That First Reports Lack Substance’, Global Witness, 29 May 2014, www.globalwitness.org/library/june-2nd-conflict​-minerals-deadline-approaches-global-​witness-warns-first-reports-lack. 88. Pole Institute, ‘Blood Minerals’. 89. Wild, Kavanagh and Ferziger, ‘Gertler Earns Billions as Mine Deals Fail to Enrich Congo’. 90. For example, the rights to the Kolwezi, Frontier and Lonshi mines passed to companies linked to Gertler after they were confiscated from Canadian mining company First Quantum Minerals. 91.

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See, for example, James Wilson and Cynthia O’Murchu, ‘Steinmetz and Malloch-Brown Settle Guinea Damages Claim’, Financial Times, 10 June 2013, www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/6f62f158-d1ce-​11e2-b17e-00144feab7d​e.html#axzz3Ezf9d5kT. FTI said the €90,000 settlement was less than what it and Malloch-Brown would have spent on legal fees trying to have the claim struck out. Beny Steinmetz and three BSGR directors also sued Global Witness, seeking to force the group to disclose information it held on the company under the Data Protection Act. See, for example, Henry Mance, ‘Beny Steinmetz Tests UK Data Laws in Global Witness Dispute’, Financial Times, 10 March 2014, www.ft.com/cms/s/0/fc1d57a2-a606-11e3-b9ed-001​44feab7de.html#axzz3EzpqJvFU. 55. BSG Resources, ‘Opportunities Available for People of Guinea Being Destroyed by Discredited Regime’, 22 March 2013, www.bsgresources.com/media/opportunities-available​-for-people-of-guinea-being-d​estroyed-by-discredit​ed-regime. 56.

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Data compiled by author from Kimberley Process country reports, www.kimberleyprocess.com/en/documents. 11. ‘A Rough Trade’, Global Witness, 1 December 1998, www.globalwitness.org/library/rough-trade. 12. Ibid. 13. See, for example, UN Security Council, ‘Report of the Panel of Experts Appointed Pursuant to Security Council Resolution 1306 (2000), Paragraph 19, in Relation to Sierra Leone’, December 2000, www.un.org/sc/committees/1​132/pdf/sclet11951e.pdf. 14. Freetown lawyer Desmond Luke, quoted in Martin Meredith, The State of Africa (London: Simon and Schuster, 2006), 566. 15. Kimberley Process data. 16. ‘Global Witness Leaves Kimberley Process, Calls for Diamond Trade to Be Held Accountable’, Global Witness press release, 5 December 2011, www.globalwitness.org/library/global-witne​ss-leaves-kimberley-process-calls-di​amond-trade-be-held-accountable. 17.

The Enablers: How the West Supports Kleptocrats and Corruption - Endangering Our Democracy by Frank Vogl

"World Economic Forum" Davos, active measures, Alan Greenspan, Asian financial crisis, bank run, Bear Stearns, Bernie Sanders, blood diamond, Brexit referendum, Carmen Reinhart, centre right, corporate governance, COVID-19, crony capitalism, cryptocurrency, Donald Trump, F. W. de Klerk, failed state, Global Witness, Greensill Capital, income inequality, information security, joint-stock company, London Interbank Offered Rate, Londongrad, low interest rates, market clearing, military-industrial complex, moral hazard, Nelson Mandela, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, profit maximization, quantitative easing, Renaissance Technologies, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, stock buybacks, too big to fail, WikiLeaks

On hearing the news, I contacted Simon Taylor, the tall, articulate British anti-corruption activist, who is a co-founder and director of Global Witness, the leading not-for-profit organization investigating corruption in natural resources in developing countries. I recalled Simon clutching a folio of e-mails some years ago that detailed alleged graft payments by the companies amounting to around $1.3 billion. Simon was excited about the prospect of the Italian prosecutors having the courage to seek prison terms for top executives. He recalled that Global Witness had started its investigation in 2012,12 but it had in fact been looking at many different shady schemes in Nigerian finance and oil that go back to much earlier days.

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Online, thousands more have signed petitions demanding the resignation of chief prosecutor Ivan Geshev and the government led by the prime minister, Boyko Borisov.” 18. Transparency International & Global Witness 2018 report: “European Getaway: Inside the Murky World of Golden Visas.” Research for this report was supported by the Global Anti-Corruption Consortium, a partnership bringing together investigative journalists and activists. The consortium is spearheaded by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and advocacy is driven by Transparency International. Global Witness is working in cooperation with the consortium on this issue. The report listed several “key findings” including the following: “In the last ten years, the EU has welcomed more than 6,000 new citizens and close to 100,000 new residents through golden visas schemes.

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Despite the brave efforts of many notable officials, the story Frank narrates shows that the system in place is simply not good enough. To everyone who is concerned about the future of our world, read this, and once armed with the facts, get out there and demand a credible response from your government!” — Simon Taylor, Director, Co-founder, Global Witness “This eye-opening book reveals a world that is unknown to most—the key facilitators of transnational crime and the looting of countries. The facilitators that Vogl brings to life cause irreparable harm through their complex financial and legal maneuvers often hard to detect until it is too late.

American Kleptocracy: How the U.S. Created the World's Greatest Money Laundering Scheme in History by Casey Michel

"RICO laws" OR "Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations", Bellingcat, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, bitcoin, clean water, coronavirus, corporate governance, cross-border payments, cryptocurrency, deindustrialization, Donald Trump, en.wikipedia.org, estate planning, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fixed income, forensic accounting, Global Witness, high net worth, hiring and firing, income inequality, Internet Archive, invention of the telegraph, Jeffrey Epstein, joint-stock company, Kickstarter, Maui Hawaii, McMansion, megaproject, Mikhail Gorbachev, New Journalism, offshore financial centre, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Ponzi scheme, race to the bottom, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Steve Jobs, too big to fail

U.S. lawyers can choose to comply, or not, as they wish.9 It makes no difference in the eyes of American law, or even in their standing within the ABA or other legal associations.10 Even with other jurisdictions having moved forward to prevent lawyers from handling dirty money—the European Union issued its first directive requiring member countries to impose anti–money laundering policies way back in 1991—America’s legal sector remains unchanged, free of any legal anti–money laundering requirements.11 A 2016 video sting from the anticorruption organization Global Witness illustrated just how willingly segments of America’s legal sector would roll around in the filthy money pouring in. Posing as an adviser to an African minister looking to move millions in suspect, dirty money—someone like Teodorin, for instance—Global Witness sat down with a dozen different American lawyers to ask their advice on how best to hide the funds in the U.S., and to see how willing they’d be to do so. “We said we needed to get the money into the U.S. without detection,” Global Witness wrote. The results, Global Witness found, were “shocking.” All but one of the lawyers immediately dove into the details of how best to launder the funds in the U.S., and how to obscure any links to the African minister in question.12 Setting up anonymous shell companies was, of course, a popular theme.

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See “FACTI Panel Report Launch,” FACTI Panel Secretariat, YouTube, https://youtu.be/D2ZHLntvGhs. 12. “Undercover Investigation of American Lawyers Reveals Role of Overseas Territories in Moving Suspect Money into the United States,” Global Witness, 12 February 2016, https://www.globalwitness.org/en/press-releases/undercover-investigation-american-lawyers-reveals-role-overseas-territories-moving-suspect-money-united-states/. 13. “Lowering the Bar: How American Lawyers Told Us How to Funnel Suspect Funds into the United States,” Global Witness, January 2016, https://humanrightscommission.house.gov/sites/humanrightscommission.house.gov/files/documents/Lowering_the_Bar_0.pdf. 14. Bradley Hope and Tom Wright, Billion Dollar Whale: The Man Who Fooled Wall Street, Hollywood, and the World (New York: Hachette, 2018). 15. 

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Ned Parker, Stephen Grey, Stefanie Eschenbacher, Roman Anin, Brad Brooks, and Christine Murray, “Ivanka and the Fugitive from Panama,” Reuters, 17 November 2017, https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-trump-panama/. 35. “Narco-a-Lago: Money Laundering at the Trump Ocean Club Panama,” November 2017, Global Witness, https://www.globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/corruption-and-money-laundering/narco-a-lago-panama/. 36. “Lifestyles of the Rich and Shameless: Trump Edition 2006–2011,” Global Witness, 17 November 2007, https://www.globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/corruption-and-money-laundering/lifestyles-rich-and-shameless-trump-edition-2006-2011/. 37. “Trump Ocean Club Panama,” YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?

Butler to the World: How Britain Became the Servant of Tycoons, Tax Dodgers, Kleptocrats and Criminals by Oliver Bullough

Alan Greenspan, Bellingcat, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, British Empire, capital controls, coronavirus, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, cuban missile crisis, Downton Abbey, Etonian, financial deregulation, financial innovation, full employment, Global Witness, John Bercow, Julian Assange, light touch regulation, lockdown, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, offshore financial centre, race to the bottom, rent-seeking, Ronald Reagan, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Suez canal 1869, Suez crisis 1956, surveillance capitalism, the High Line, WikiLeaks

‘Not (former) PM Viktor Yanukovich, not Russia, but the power of energy-related interests.’ But who were those interests? Who actually were the owners of RUE? Everyone knew that Gazprom owned half of the company, but who owned the other half? Which individual was making the kind of money that only comes when you face down a government and win? Global Witness, a London-based campaign group which works to expose corruption around natural resources, dug as deep into the contract as it could. It identified the shell companies and the bank accounts, and it picked out a few individuals who seemed to be involved: an Israeli lawyer, a former Hungarian minister, a British businessman, politicians in Turkmenistan and various Ukrainians and Russians including a notorious mobster called Semyon Mogilevich.

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‘How is it in the interests of Ukraine, or indeed of Europe, to have such a vital country’s gas supply controlled by complex and opaque business structures?’ their report asked. A couple of days after the report was published, as if to taunt its authors, the owner of the other half of RUE revealed himself. His name was Dmitry Firtash. Global Witness had mentioned him in its report but struggled to find out much about him. His biography was sketchy, and in place of a photograph they had put a question mark. Firtash was only thirty-nine years old, but his company had defeated a government still riding high on the emotions of a popular revolution, and no one even knew what he looked like.

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One area that investigators became concerned about was gas shipments through Ukraine, and inevitably their attention fell on Dmitry Firtash. In April 2006, just months after Firtash’s big gas deal helped doom the prospect of Ukraine’s Orange Revolution, the Wall Street Journal announced that US law enforcement was investigating RUE’s ties to organised crime. It was this investigation rather than that of Global Witness that seems to have finally forced Firtash to go public about owning half of RUE’s shares. The WSJ reported that Asquith had gone to Washington on Firtash’s behalf to deny any connection to Mogilevich, which is a denial that Firtash has had to make on a regular basis ever since. ‘There is no business connection between Mr Mogilevich and me.

The Story of Stuff: The Impact of Overconsumption on the Planet, Our Communities, and Our Health-And How We Can Make It Better by Annie Leonard

air freight, banking crisis, big-box store, blood diamond, Bretton Woods, business logic, California gold rush, carbon footprint, carbon tax, clean water, Community Supported Agriculture, cotton gin, dematerialisation, employer provided health coverage, energy security, European colonialism, export processing zone, Firefox, Food sovereignty, Ford paid five dollars a day, full employment, global supply chain, Global Witness, income inequality, independent contractor, Indoor air pollution, intermodal, Jeff Bezos, job satisfaction, Kickstarter, liberation theology, McMansion, megaproject, Nelson Mandela, new economy, oil shale / tar sands, peak oil, planned obsolescence, Ralph Nader, renewable energy credits, Silicon Valley, special economic zone, supply-chain management, systems thinking, TED Talk, the built environment, trade liberalization, trickle-down economics, union organizing, Wall-E, Whole Earth Review, Zipcar

“The Golden Rules,” No Dirty Gold (nodirtygold.org/goldenrules.cfm). 91. “Combating Conflict Diamonds,” Global Witness (globalwitness.org/pages/en/conflict_diamonds.html). 92. “Leaders of diamond-fuelled terror campaign convicted by Sierra Leone’s Special Court,” press release from Global Witness, February 26, 2009 (globalwitness.org/media_library_detail.php/723/ en/leaders_of_diamond_fuelled_terror_ campaign_convicted_by_sierra _leones_special_court). 93. Ibid. 94. Ibid. 95. “The Kimberley Process,” Global Witness (globalwitness.org/pages/en/the_ kimberley_process.html). 96. “Conflict Diamonds: Sanctions and War,” United Nations (un.org/peace/africa/Diamond.html). 97.

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These minerals and metals are usually mined under oppressive conditions, with workers paid little to nothing. According to Global Witness, a London-and Washington, D.C.-based organization leading the campaign on conflict diamonds, these rocks “have funded brutal conflicts in Africa that have resulted in the death and displacement of millions of people. Diamonds have also been used by terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda to finance their activities and for money-laundering purposes.”91 The role of “conflict diamonds” or “blood diamonds” in Sierra Leone’s civil war has received global attention, in large part thanks to Global Witness’ Combating Conflict Diamonds campaign, launched in 1998.

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“Congo’s Tragedy: The war the world forgot,” The Independent [UK], May 5, 2006 (independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/congos-tragedy-the-war-the-world-forgot-476929.html). 100. Ibid. 101. Ibid. 102. Ibid. 103. Faced with a Gun, What Can you Do? War and the Militarisation of Mining in Eastern Congo, Global Witness, July 2009. Tables with statistics on the mineral exports from 2007 and the first half of 2008 can be found on p. 90 (globalwitness.org/media_library_detail.php/786 /en/global_witness_report_ faced_with_a_gun_what_can_yo). 104. “Congo’s Tragedy: The war the world forgot.” 105. Jack Ewing, “Blood on Your Phone? Unlikely It’s ‘Conflict Coltan,’” Der Speigel Online International, November 18, 2008 (spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,591097,00.html). 106.

The Panama Papers: Breaking the Story of How the Rich and Powerful Hide Their Money by Frederik Obermaier

air gap, banking crisis, blood diamond, book value, credit crunch, crony capitalism, Deng Xiaoping, Edward Snowden, family office, Global Witness, high net worth, income inequality, Jeremy Corbyn, Kickstarter, Laura Poitras, liquidationism / Banker’s doctrine / the Treasury view, mega-rich, megaproject, Mikhail Gorbachev, mortgage debt, Nelson Mandela, offshore financial centre, optical character recognition, out of africa, race to the bottom, vertical integration, We are the 99%, WikiLeaks

Take, for example, the fact that BSGR had reported in a press release that the wife of the dictator had nothing to do with the Simandou deal. Consequently, Global Witness published a video from 2006 showing Frédéric Cilins and other BSGR representatives together with Mamadie Touré at an event focusing on the Simandou project. BSGR had also claimed that Mamadie Touré wasn’t married to President Conté. In response to this, Global Witness published a copy of her passport. In it, it clearly states ‘Epouse P.R.G.’ Wife of the president of the Republic of Guinea.13 For more than three years, Global Witness has been focusing its attention on BSGR in this way. The man behind it all is Daniel Balint-Kurti.

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And then there’s another contract terminating the cooperation of Touré, that is to say Matinda, with Pentler, and pledging Matinda a sum of $3.1 million for its share in the activities in Guinea.11 Mamadie Touré’s brother was suddenly the vice president of BSGR Guinea, and BSGR was awarded the Simandou contract.12 When details about the contracts were revealed in 2012, Global Witness took special note. It was a perfect case for investigation by the non-governmental organization, which is committed to the fight against corruption, tax havens and the exploitation of entire countries, especially since it was backed by the American billionaire George Soros, one of the new president Alpha Condé’s advisers. So the people at Global Witness commenced their investigations, and it wasn’t long before they found something. Take, for example, the fact that BSGR had reported in a press release that the wife of the dictator had nothing to do with the Simandou deal.

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The man behind it all is Daniel Balint-Kurti. He was formerly based in Africa, where he worked as a journalist for The Times and the Independent. Now he works for Global Witness, questioning witnesses, procuring documents and ploughing through company registers all over the world. His aim: to prove that Beny Steinmetz ended up with the Simandou concession as a result of bribery. BSGR refers to it as a ‘crude smear campaign’. In 2013 BSGR initiated proceedings against Global Witness. Steinmetz’s company wanted to know, among other things, who Balint-Kurti’s sources are. The case was dropped. We want to talk to Daniel Balint-Kurti.

Moneyland: Why Thieves and Crooks Now Rule the World and How to Take It Back by Oliver Bullough

Alan Greenspan, banking crisis, Bernie Madoff, bitcoin, blood diamond, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, BRICs, British Empire, capital controls, central bank independence, corporate governance, cryptocurrency, cuban missile crisis, dark matter, diversification, Donald Trump, energy security, failed state, financial engineering, Flash crash, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, Global Witness, high net worth, if you see hoof prints, think horses—not zebras, income inequality, joint-stock company, land bank, liberal capitalism, liberal world order, mass immigration, medical malpractice, Navinder Sarao, offshore financial centre, plutocrats, Plutonomy: Buying Luxury, Explaining Global Imbalances, rent-seeking, Richard Feynman, risk tolerance, Sloane Ranger, sovereign wealth fund, Suez crisis 1956, WikiLeaks

The origin of the source material gives the overwhelming impression that this is an Anglo-American problem, though that is at least as much a reflection of the two countries’ relative willingness to prosecute (or, at least, discuss) cases of corruption and fraud, as it is a sign of their open-ness to dirty money. There is also a trove of material from non-governmental organisations like Transparency International, the Tax Justice Network, Corruption Watch, Sherpa and Global Witness, who have done more than most countries to expose how the wealthy have abused the world’s financial architecture for their own private gain. In January 2016, Global Witness published the results of an elaborate sting operation, in which its employee approached thirteen different law firms in New York, posing as an adviser to an African politician seeking to bring clearly suspect funds into the United States, and surreptitiously filmed the resulting conversations.

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Why do so many corrupt foreigners want to invest their money in New York? Moneyland protects their assets against confiscation. In putting together this account of Moneyland’s birth, growth, structure and defences, I have relied on my own investigations, and those of others: US congressional committees; NGOs like Global Witness and Transparency International; economists, academics and others. One point that needs to be made firmly and repeatedly, however, is that I am not describing a conspiracy. Moneyland is not controlled by an arch-villain, stroking a white cat on the arm of a leather chair. If there was a controlling brain behind Moneyland it would be easy to deal with.

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His colleague Hugh Finnegan added: ‘Many foreign owners just don’t want anybody to know who they are. So they set up limited liability companies and it’s usually one or two other companies up the food chain, making it more difficult to identify.’ Of course, neither lawyer – nor, indeed, any of the others who discussed the hypothetical African minister with Global Witness’ investigator – committed a crime, and none of them followed through on their suggestions. The NGO’s final report did conclude, however, that it was concerned about ‘the ease with which prospective clients can obtain ideas on how to move suspect funds into the US, and the need for reform of the legal system to make it more difficult to move suspect funds’.

Volt Rush: The Winners and Losers in the Race to Go Green by Henry Sanderson

"World Economic Forum" Davos, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, animal electricity, autonomous vehicles, Boris Johnson, carbon footprint, Carl Icahn, circular economy, commodity super cycle, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, David Attenborough, decarbonisation, Deng Xiaoping, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, energy transition, Extinction Rebellion, Exxon Valdez, Fairphone, Ford Model T, gigafactory, global supply chain, Global Witness, income per capita, Internet of things, invention of the steam engine, Kickstarter, lockdown, megacity, Menlo Park, oil shale / tar sands, planned obsolescence, popular capitalism, purchasing power parity, QR code, reality distortion field, Ronald Reagan, Scramble for Africa, short squeeze, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, smart grid, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Jobs, supply-chain management, tech billionaire, Tesla Model S, The Chicago School, the new new thing, three-masted sailing ship, Tony Fadell, UNCLOS, WikiLeaks, work culture

For Glencore, Gertler was a middleman between government officials and the company; he was an ‘arm’s length’ agent. Over ten years, Glencore gave more than half a billion dollars to offshore companies owned by Gertler, in the form of loans, shares and cash, allowing him to make at least $67 million in profits, according to the NGO Global Witness. A study overseen by Kofi Annan in 2013 estimated that five mining deals involving Gertler (including some with Glencore) saw the Congo lose out on $1.4 billion – twice the country’s annual spending on health and education. The US Treasury would later put the figure at $1.6 billion; an anticorruption organisation later estimated an even higher figure of $1.95 billion.6 Gertler has not been convicted of any crime and has denied any wrongdoing in his dealings in the Congo.

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Gertler and Glencore had won over the early rough-and-tumble adventurers who had come to the Congo. They were no match for Glencore’s firepower. Hamze of Groupe Bazano ended up being bought out and retiring to Malta to enjoy his riches. Glencore’s power helped Gertler survive, according to the NGO Global Witness. ‘With the London-listed giant behind him, he was able to knock out the most powerful men in Congo’s mining sector,’ the group said.23 Once it had secured its two mines Glencore was well positioned in the Congo. Copper prices had recovered from a financial crisis-induced downturn and were heading towards a record $10,000 a tonne.

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Glencore appointed Tony Hayward, the former head of BP who had alienated US authorities during the company’s oil spill off the coast of Louisiana, as head of the committee responding to the DoJ. Trim and athletic Hayward embraced the Glencore boys’ club, and could be quick to anger when asked by investors why Glencore had not distanced itself from Gertler. Hayward had told the NGO Global Witness in 2014 that ‘there is absolutely no basis for any investigation and we have no intention of carrying one out’.31 Now four years later he was in charge of providing the paperwork for just such an investigation. In May 2022 Glencore pleaded guilty and agreed to pay $1.5 billion to settle investigations by authorities in the US, UK and Brazil.

Border and Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism by Harsha Walia

anti-communist, antiwork, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter, blood diamond, borderless world, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, British Empire, California gold rush, clean water, climate change refugee, collective bargaining, colonial rule, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, crack epidemic, dark matter, decarbonisation, deindustrialization, Donald Trump, drone strike, Elon Musk, European colonialism, eurozone crisis, export processing zone, extractivism, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Food sovereignty, G4S, gentrification, George Floyd, global pandemic, global supply chain, Global Witness, green new deal, guest worker program, illegal immigration, immigration reform, income inequality, informal economy, Jeff Bezos, Jeremy Corbyn, joint-stock company, land reform, late capitalism, lockdown, mandatory minimum, mass immigration, mass incarceration, means of production, microcredit, military-industrial complex, Monroe Doctrine, moral panic, Naomi Klein, neoliberal agenda, Occupy movement, ocean acidification, oil shale / tar sands, open borders, pension reform, Rana Plaza, Richard Florida, Ronald Reagan, Shoshana Zuboff, social distancing, special economic zone, Steve Bannon, strikebreaker, structural adjustment programs, surveillance capitalism, trade liberalization, transatlantic slave trade, transcontinental railway, union organizing, upwardly mobile, urban planning, W. E. B. Du Bois, wages for housework, Washington Consensus, women in the workforce

The long trajectory of Australian control over Papua New Guinea has been characterized by mass executions, legislated control through the Native Regulations and Ordinances, conscription of forced labor, and imposition of industrial mining such as the Rio Tinto Panguna mine. Today, extracted palm oil is the country’s primary export, and “special agricultural and business leases” cover over two million hectares, leading to rapid deforestation in one of the world’s largest remaining tropical forests.24 An explosive investigation in 2020 by Global Witness revealed a planned rubber plantation on Manus Island, propped up by multinational corporations and global financial institutions, is likely a front for illegal logging.25 Nauru, the world’s smallest island nation, was a colony of Germany in the 1880s, after which an Australia–New Zealand–UK tripartite agreement took over all rights to phosphate mining on the island.

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(Oakland: AK Press, 2011), 237. 31.Sunera Thobani, Exalted Subjects (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007), 147. 32.Sara Ahmed, Living a Feminist Life (Durham: Duke University Press, 2017), 32. 33.Ghassan Hage, “Fears of ‘White Decline’ Show How a Minor Dent to Domination Can Be Catastrophic for Some,” Guardian, April 15, 2019, www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/apr/15/fears-of-white-decline-show-how-a-minor-dent-to-domination-can-be-catastrophic-for-some. 34.Jason Buzi quoted in Oliver McAteer, “A Millionaire Wants to Move the World’s 60 Million Refugees to an Island,” Metro, July 28, 2015, https://metro.co.uk/2015/07/28/a-millionaire-wants-to-move-the-worlds-60-million-refugees-to-an-island-5315744/. 35.Harry Minas quoted in Frank Chung, “Real Estate Mogul’s ‘Radical Solution’ to the Global Refugee Crisis,” News Corp Australia, July 27, 2015, www.news.com.au/finance/economy/real-estate-moguls-radical-solution-to-the-global-refugee-crisis/news-story/c78f094595d65e394b90c997901822de. 36.Global Witness, Enemies of the State? How Governments and Business Silence Land and Environmental Defenders, July 2019, www.globalwitness.org/documents/19766/Enemies_of_the_State.pdf. 37.Missing Migrants Project, “Missing Migrants: Tracking Deaths Along Migratory Routes,” International Organization for Migration, https://missingmigrants.iom.int/.

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Meyer and Clare Ribando Seelke, “Central America Regional Security Initiative: Background and Policy Issues for Congress,” Congressional Research Service, December 17, 2015, https://fas.org/sgp/crs/row/R41731.pdf. 27.Paley, Drug War Capitalism, 16. 28.Nina Lakhani, “Berta Cáceres Court Papers Show Murder Suspects’ Links to US–Trained Elite Troops,” Guardian, February 28, 2017, www.theguardian.com/world/2017/feb/28/berta-caceres-honduras-military-intelligence-us-trained-special-forces; Billy Kyte, “Honduras: The Deadliest Country in the World for Environmental Activism,” Global Witness, January 2017, www.globalwitness.org/es/campaigns/environmental-activists/honduras-deadliest-country-world-environmental-activism/. 29.Denise Ferreira da Silva, Toward a Global Idea of Race (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007), 3. 30.C. L. R. James, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution (New York: Vintage Books, 1963). 31.Jean Saint-Vil, “France Should Return the $40 Billion (U.S) It Ransomed at Gun Point from Haiti between 1825 and 1947,” Global Research: Centre for Research on Globalization, January 19, 2010, www.globalresearch.ca/france-should-return-the-40-billion-u-s-it-ransomed-at-gun-point-from-haiti-between-1825-and-1947/17077. 32.Peter James Hudson, Bankers and Empire: How Wall Street Colonized the Caribbean (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017), 6. 33.Steve Coupeau, The History of Haiti (London: Greenwood Press, 2008). 34.Jean Saint-Vil, “The Real Problem with Haiti,” The Canada-Haiti Information Project, https://canada-haiti.ca/content/real-problem-haiti-jean-saint-vil. 35.Keston K.

McMafia: A Journey Through the Global Criminal Underworld by Misha Glenny

"RICO laws" OR "Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations", "World Economic Forum" Davos, anti-communist, Anton Chekhov, Berlin Wall, blood diamond, BRICs, colonial rule, crony capitalism, Deng Xiaoping, Doha Development Round, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, Firefox, forensic accounting, friendly fire, glass ceiling, Global Witness, Great Leap Forward, illegal immigration, joint-stock company, low interest rates, market bubble, Mikhail Gorbachev, Nelson Mandela, Nick Leeson, no-fly zone, offshore financial centre, Oklahoma City bombing, Pearl River Delta, place-making, rising living standards, Ronald Reagan, Shenzhen special economic zone , Skype, special economic zone, Stephen Hawking, trade liberalization, trade route, Transnistria, unemployed young men, upwardly mobile

Charmian Gooch was not yet thirty when, in 1995, she and two friends formed an NGO called Global Witness. “We were monitoring the work of a lot of organizations dealing with the environment, and another lot dealing with human rights. And we just kept seeing the bits in between which connected the two areas but which nobody was investigating. We try to look at issues that are being neglected but which urgently need addressing, and then come up with practical ideas for tackling these problems.” With the minimum of resources and at considerable personal risk, Global Witness decided to map every twist and turn in the road that brought diamonds from Angola to London and New York.

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Slowly the manufacturers of mobile telephones are adhering to a protocol that prevents the use of “conflict” coltan from Africa. There is still a long way to go, but Global Witness has successfully highlighted that organized crime is not about sinister corporations planning on taking over the world. It is about a complex interplay between the regulated and unregulated global economy that defies simple solutions but need not be left to fester as it was until Global Witness finally forced Western governments to acknowledge their coresponsibility for the problem. The team also raised the issue of how ordinary citizens in the West are much more closely connected to major criminal industries than they might otherwise realize.

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The impact of the report was immense, and within two years, with the backing of Congress, several European governments, and—conspicuously—de Beers, the diamond trade moved toward establishing the Kimberley Protocol, named after the historic center of the diamond industry in South Africa. Kimberley signatories obliged themselves to engage only in the purchase and sale of diamonds that had a Country of Origin certificate. Global Witness followed up their first report with others dealing with West Africa. Before long, the UN published its own report under the chairmanship of the Canadian diplomat Robert Fowler. This document went further than any other in naming Western companies complicit in both the arms trade to Africa and the diamond trade from the continent.

Independent Diplomat: Dispatches From an Unaccountable Elite by Carne Ross

Abraham Maslow, barriers to entry, blood diamond, carbon tax, cuban missile crisis, Doha Development Round, energy security, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Global Witness, income inequality, information security, iterative process, meta-analysis, oil-for-food scandal, one-China policy, Peace of Westphalia, Pearl River Delta, stakhanovite, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Tragedy of the Commons, zero-sum game

Effective foreign policy, whether in promoting labour rights or environmental standards, now requires coalitions of actors — the private sector, civil society and government — acting in concert to be effective.11 If foreign ministries are to be effective, even relevant, in the future, as propagators of policy and change they must consider how to organise such coalitions, and how to encompass, direct and inform these many different strands and effectors of policy. The NGO Global Witness has been tracking how wars are fuelled by the exploitation of natural resources — timber, diamonds — by unscrupulous governments and traders. Global Witness popularised the notion of “conflict diamonds”, whose extraction (often in conditions of dreadful cruelty) was controlled by warlords in West Africa (Liberia’s Charles Taylor being the most infamous example) but bought by international diamond trading companies and sold on the high street.

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The proceeds went to buy AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades which were then used in the vicious and destructive wars in Liberia, Sierra Leone and elsewhere. Global Witness’s work has done much to highlight a connection that both stimulates and sustains conflict, and as a result, governments and, to a limited extent, the diamond trade itself are having to take action. There is a long way still to go towards global rules and norms to inhibit such trade. The fact that Global Witness is run on a shoestring (its founders raised their first funds by shaking collecting tins at underground stations) and funded by philanthropic foundations illustrates that its ideas are still outside the foreign policy mainstream.

A Short Ride in the Jungle by Antonia Bolingbroke-Kent

colonial rule, cuban missile crisis, digital map, Global Witness, Higgs boson, Kickstarter, Skype, South China Sea, trade route

I've said my piece about the devastating impact of logging, but in Cambodia the situation is just as dire. It's been estimated that between 2000 and 2005 alone, Cambodia lost a third of its tree cover. In 2007 the NGO Global Witness released a report which revealed how, 'A tiny elite is riding roughshod over the people and legal system to get its hands on the country's natural resource wealth.' A few months after the report was published Global Witness was kicked out of Cambodia. Since then several notable anti-logging campaigners have lost their lives. Chut Wutty, the director of the Cambodian Natural Resource Protection Group, was murdered in April 2012.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Baker, Mark Nam: The Vietnam War in the Words of the Men and Women Who Fought There (1981, Abacus, London) Burchett, Wilfred G. Vietnam: Inside Story of the Guerilla War (1965, International Publishers, New York) Cambodia's Family Trees: Illegal Logging and the Stripping of Public Assets by Cambodia's Elite (2007, Global Witness, London) Country for Sale: How Cambodia's Elite has Captured the Country's Extractive Industries (2009, Global Witness, London) Crossroads: The Illicit Timber Trade Between Laos and Vietnam (2011, Environmental Investigation Agency, London) Dong Loc Past and Now (2008, Vietnam Press and Communication Development, Hanoi) Fenton, James The Fall of Saigon (1985, Granta, Cambridge) Haynes Service and Repair Manual: C50, C70 & C90, 1967 to 2003 (2006, Haynes Publishing, USA) Hunt, Christopher Sparring with Charlie: Motorbiking Down the Ho Chi Minh Trail (1996, Anchor Books, New York) Karber, Phil The Indochina Chronicles: Travels in Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam (2005, Marshall Cavendish, Singapore) Khoi, Hoang The Ho Chi Minh Trail (2001, The Gioi Publishers, Hanoi) Kiernan, Ben How Pol Pot Came to Power, Second Edition: Colonialism, Nationalism, and Communism in Cambodia, 1930–1975 (2004, Yale University Press, New Haven and London) Lewis, Norman A Dragon Apparent: Travels in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam (2003, Eland, London (First published in 1951)) Mason, Robert Chickenhawk (1984, Corgi, London) Morris, Virginia The Road to Freedom: A History of the Ho Chi Minh Trail (2006, Orchid Press) Murphy, Dervla One Foot in Laos (1999, John Murray, London) Newman, Rick and Shepperd, Don Bury Us Upside Down: The Misty Pilots and the Secret Battle for the Ho Chi Minh Trail (2007, Ballantine Books, New York) Nguyen, Dong Sy The Trans-Truong Son Route (2005, The Gioi publishers, Hanoi) Ninh, Bao The Sorrow of War (1998, Vintage, London) Phong, Dang Thang-Long Hanoi: The Story of a Single Street (2010, Knowledge Publishing House, Hanoi) Prados, John Blood Road: The Ho Chi Minh Trail and the Vietnam War (1998, John Wiley & Sons, New York) Robbins, Christopher The Ravens: The True Story of a Secret War in Laos (2012, Apostrophe Books, Kindle edition) Rubber Barons: How Vietnamese Companies and International Financiers are Driving a Land Grabbing Crisis in Cambodia and Laos (2013, Global Witness, London) Shawcross, William S.

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Vietnam: Inside Story of the Guerilla War (1965, International Publishers, New York) Cambodia's Family Trees: Illegal Logging and the Stripping of Public Assets by Cambodia's Elite (2007, Global Witness, London) Country for Sale: How Cambodia's Elite has Captured the Country's Extractive Industries (2009, Global Witness, London) Crossroads: The Illicit Timber Trade Between Laos and Vietnam (2011, Environmental Investigation Agency, London) Dong Loc Past and Now (2008, Vietnam Press and Communication Development, Hanoi) Fenton, James The Fall of Saigon (1985, Granta, Cambridge) Haynes Service and Repair Manual: C50, C70 & C90, 1967 to 2003 (2006, Haynes Publishing, USA) Hunt, Christopher Sparring with Charlie: Motorbiking Down the Ho Chi Minh Trail (1996, Anchor Books, New York) Karber, Phil The Indochina Chronicles: Travels in Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam (2005, Marshall Cavendish, Singapore) Khoi, Hoang The Ho Chi Minh Trail (2001, The Gioi Publishers, Hanoi) Kiernan, Ben How Pol Pot Came to Power, Second Edition: Colonialism, Nationalism, and Communism in Cambodia, 1930–1975 (2004, Yale University Press, New Haven and London) Lewis, Norman A Dragon Apparent: Travels in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam (2003, Eland, London (First published in 1951)) Mason, Robert Chickenhawk (1984, Corgi, London) Morris, Virginia The Road to Freedom: A History of the Ho Chi Minh Trail (2006, Orchid Press) Murphy, Dervla One Foot in Laos (1999, John Murray, London) Newman, Rick and Shepperd, Don Bury Us Upside Down: The Misty Pilots and the Secret Battle for the Ho Chi Minh Trail (2007, Ballantine Books, New York) Nguyen, Dong Sy The Trans-Truong Son Route (2005, The Gioi publishers, Hanoi) Ninh, Bao The Sorrow of War (1998, Vintage, London) Phong, Dang Thang-Long Hanoi: The Story of a Single Street (2010, Knowledge Publishing House, Hanoi) Prados, John Blood Road: The Ho Chi Minh Trail and the Vietnam War (1998, John Wiley & Sons, New York) Robbins, Christopher The Ravens: The True Story of a Secret War in Laos (2012, Apostrophe Books, Kindle edition) Rubber Barons: How Vietnamese Companies and International Financiers are Driving a Land Grabbing Crisis in Cambodia and Laos (2013, Global Witness, London) Shawcross, William S. Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon and the destruction of Cambodia (1979, Simon & Schuster, New York) Smith, Neil The Vietnam War: History in an Hour (2012, HarperPress, London) Swain, Jon River of Time (1996, Vintage, London) Tram, Dang Thuy Last Night I Dreamed of Peace: The Diary of Dang Thuy Tram (2007, Three Rivers Press, New York, translated by Andrew X.

The Market for Force: The Consequences of Privatizing Security by Deborah D. Avant

barriers to entry, continuation of politics by other means, corporate social responsibility, failed state, Global Witness, hiring and firing, independent contractor, information asymmetry, interchangeable parts, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, Nelson Mandela, operational security, Peace of Westphalia, post-Fordism, principal–agent problem, private military company, profit motive, RAND corporation, rent-seeking, rolodex, Seymour Hersh, The Nature of the Firm, trade route, transaction costs

Karl, “The Perils of the Petro-State: Reflections on the Politics of Plenty,” Journal of International Affairs Vol. 53, No. 1 (fall 1999): 34; Jedrzej George Frynas, “Political Instability and Business: Focus on Shell in Nigeria,” Third World Quarterly Vol. 19, No. 3 (1998): 457–78; Global Witness, A Crude Awakening: the Role of Oil and Banking Industries in Angolan Civil War (London: Global Witness, 1999); Scott Pegg, “The Cost of Doing Business: Transnational Corporations and Violence in Nigeria,” Security Dialogue Vol. 30, No. 4 (1999): 473–484. See Keck and Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders; Thomas Risse, “The Power of Norms versus the Norms of Power: Transnational Civil Society and Human Rights,” in Ann M.

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., The Makers of Modern Strategy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986). Gilpin, Robert, The Political Economy of International Relations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987). Giragosian, Richard, “Targeting Weak Points: Iraq’s Oil Pipelines,” Asia Times (27 January 2004). Global Witness, A Crude Awakening: the Role of Oil and Banking Industries in Angolan Civil War (London: Global Witness, 1999). Goldgeier, James and Michael McFaul, “A Tale of Two Worlds: Core and Periphery in the Post-Cold War Era,” International Organization Vol. 46, No. 2 (spring 1992), 467–91. Goldman Charles A., Brace R. Orvis, and Rodger Madison, Staffing Army ROTC at Colleges and Universities: Alternatives for Reducing the Use of ActiveDuty Soldiers (Santa Monica: RAND, 1999).

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Transnational financing of PSCs, in particular, undermines the state’s consequential tools altogether and may focus resources on narrow issue areas.106 Indeed, the transnational provision of security services may build constituencies loyal to a transnational community rather than any local governance framework.107 If transnational financing redistributes power over who gets to decide about violence, political control has changed. Transnational financing may also affect the social control of force. Analyses of INGOs have examined how these organizations use a variety 102 103 104 105 106 107 Karl, “Perils of the Petro-State”; Frynas, “Political Instability and Business”; Global Witness, “A Crude Awakening”; Pegg, “Cost of Doing Business.” See Nancy Peluso, “Coercing Conservation,” in Ronnie D. Lipschutz and Ken Conca, eds., The State and Social Power in Global Environmental Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993). The means state forces use may or may not reflect the preferences of transnational actors.

Who Owns England?: How We Lost Our Green and Pleasant Land, and How to Take It Back by Guy Shrubsole

Adam Curtis, Anthropocene, back-to-the-land, Beeching cuts, Boris Johnson, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, centre right, congestion charging, Crossrail, deindustrialization, digital map, do-ocracy, Downton Abbey, false flag, financial deregulation, fixed income, fulfillment center, Garrett Hardin, gentrification, Global Witness, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Google Earth, housing crisis, housing justice, James Dyson, Jeremy Corbyn, Kickstarter, land bank, land reform, land tenure, land value tax, linked data, loadsamoney, Londongrad, machine readable, mega-rich, mutually assured destruction, new economy, Occupy movement, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, openstreetmap, place-making, plutocrats, profit motive, rent-seeking, rewilding, Right to Buy, Ronald Reagan, Russell Brand, sceptred isle, Stewart Brand, the built environment, the map is not the territory, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tragedy of the Commons, trickle-down economics, urban sprawl, web of trust, Yom Kippur War, zero-sum game

Offshore jurisdictions like Guernsey, the British Virgin Islands and Panama aren’t just attractive to companies for reasons of ‘tax efficiency’: they also provide a cloak of secrecy, with less transparent company registries than the UK. If you register a company in the British Virgin Islands, for instance, there is no obligation to reveal the Person of Significant Control who lies behind it. Anti-corruption charities Global Witness and Transparency International have been pressing for full, public company registers to be implemented in all UK Overseas Territories – including Guernsey and the British Virgin Islands. For years, the government dragged their feet, before being outsmarted by a cross-party group of MPs who forced them to adopt the measures in an amendment to legislation.

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I had found out that number 41 had been bought on a long lease by an offshore company, registered in the British Virgin Islands, a well-known tax haven. Digging further, I’d discovered that the ultimate owner of this company was one Timur Kulibayev, the son-in-law of the president of Kazakhstan – a country that anti-corruption charity Global Witness describes as one of ‘the world’s worst kleptocratic regimes’. He had bought the leasehold of number 41 for a staggering £28.5 million back in 2007, when it had already been empty for several years. The Guardian journalist Helen Pidd found it was still lying vacant two years later, but that there was little that the local council, Westminster borough, could do about it.

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First, there are concerns that a lot of the property purchases being made by Russians in the UK are to launder money from dodgy sources (though there is no evidence to indicate the particular oligarchs profiled earlier have done so). The National Crime Agency (NCA) estimates that £100 billion a year of corrupt foreign money is laundered through the UK, with much of it coming from Russia. ‘London is the money-laundering capital of the world,’ argues Chido Dunn of campaign group Global Witness. That’s hugely concerning, both morally – it means the UK is essentially aiding and abetting criminal activity overseas – and because of the impact it has on our own housing market. ‘Prices of high-end properties are artificially driven up by the desire of overseas criminals to sequester their assets here in the UK,’ says Donald Toon of the NCA.

No Is Not Enough: Resisting Trump’s Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need by Naomi Klein

"Hurricane Katrina" Superdome, "World Economic Forum" Davos, Airbnb, antiwork, basic income, battle of ideas, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter, Brewster Kahle, carbon tax, Carl Icahn, Celebration, Florida, clean water, collective bargaining, Corrections Corporation of America, data science, desegregation, Donald Trump, drone strike, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, end-to-end encryption, energy transition, extractivism, fake news, financial deregulation, gentrification, Global Witness, greed is good, green transition, high net worth, high-speed rail, Howard Zinn, illegal immigration, impact investing, income inequality, Internet Archive, Kickstarter, late capitalism, Mark Zuckerberg, market bubble, market fundamentalism, mass incarceration, megaproject, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, moral panic, Naomi Klein, Nate Silver, new economy, Occupy movement, ocean acidification, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, open borders, Paris climate accords, Patri Friedman, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, private military company, profit motive, race to the bottom, Ralph Nader, Ronald Reagan, Saturday Night Live, sexual politics, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Steve Bannon, subprime mortgage crisis, tech billionaire, too big to fail, trade liberalization, transatlantic slave trade, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, trickle-down economics, Upton Sinclair, urban decay, W. E. B. Du Bois, women in the workforce, working poor

Winona LaDuke: “This is a moment of extreme corporate rights…” Winona LaDuke, “The Beginning Is Near: The Deep North, Evictions and Pipeline Deadlines,” Indian Country News, November 29, 2016, http://www.indiancountrynews.com/​index.php/​columnists/​winona-laduke/​14339-the-beginning-is-near-the-deep-north-evictions-and-pipeline-deadlines. Global Witness: “More than three people were killed a week in 2015…” Global Witness, On Dangerous Ground (London: Global Witness, June 2016), https://www.globalwitness.org/​en/​campaigns/​environmental-activists/​dangerous-ground/. Roughly $80 million pulled from the banks invested in the DAPL Julia Carrie Wong, “Private Investor Divests $34.8m from Firms Tied to Dakota Access Pipeline,” Guardian, March 1, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/​us-news/​2017/​mar/​01/​dakota-access-pipeline-storebrand-norway-divest-standing-rock.

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As the great Anishinaabe writer and organizer Winona LaDuke wrote of the standoff, “This is a moment of extreme corporate rights and extreme racism faced with courage, prayers and resolve.” It’s a battle that knows no borders. All around the world, the people doing the sacred work of protecting fragile ecologies from industrial onslaught are facing dirty wars. According to a report from the human rights watchdog Global Witness, “More than three people were killed a week in 2015 defending their land, forests and rivers against destructive industries…. Increasingly communities that take a stand are finding themselves in the firing line of companies’ private security, state forces and a thriving market for contract killers.”

The Secret World of Oil by Ken Silverstein

business intelligence, clean water, corporate governance, corporate raider, Donald Trump, energy security, Exxon Valdez, failed state, financial engineering, Global Witness, Google Earth, John Deuss, offshore financial centre, oil shock, oil-for-food scandal, Oscar Wyatt, paper trading, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, vertical integration, WikiLeaks, Yom Kippur War

The natural resources industry has been a cash cow for Hun Sen and his ruling party. “A corrupt elite has captured the country’s emerging oil and mineral sectors,” Global Witness said in a 2009 report called “Country for Sale.” It said Cambodia could earn vast wealth from oil and minerals, but that its “future is being jeopardized by high-level corruption, nepotism, and patronage in the allocation and management of these critical public assets.” According to Global Witness, key concessions and resources were awarded “behind closed doors” by a few power brokers with close ties to Prime Minister Hun Sen and senior government officials.

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Teodorin selected Kusch Yachts to oversee construction (motto: “We don’t just build yachts that you use, we create a dream that you live”), which builds at a shipyard on the Elbe River in northern Germany. The vessel’s basic design was completed in December 2009, and the original delivery date was set for three years later. Kusch employees who spoke to a Global Witness investigator said that Teodorin’s yacht was slated for 387 feet and would house a cinema, a restaurant, a bar, a swimming pool, and a $1.3 million security system complete with floor-motion sensors, photoelectric barriers, and fingerprint door openers. Its total contract price was approximately $380 million, which would have made it the world’s second most expensive yacht, behind Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich’s $1.2 billion Eclipse.

Treasure Islands: Uncovering the Damage of Offshore Banking and Tax Havens by Nicholas Shaxson

Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, bank run, battle of ideas, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business climate, call centre, capital controls, collapse of Lehman Brothers, computerized trading, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, Double Irish / Dutch Sandwich, export processing zone, failed state, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, Fractional reserve banking, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, Global Witness, Golden arches theory, high net worth, income inequality, Kenneth Rogoff, laissez-faire capitalism, land reform, land value tax, light touch regulation, Londongrad, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, Martin Wolf, Money creation, money market fund, New Journalism, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, oil shock, old-boy network, out of africa, passive income, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, race to the bottom, regulatory arbitrage, reserve currency, Ronald Reagan, shareholder value, Suez crisis 1956, The Spirit Level, too big to fail, transfer pricing, vertical integration, Washington Consensus

In February 2001, after 16 of the 31 notes (or $774 million) had been paid off, the Swiss judge froze the remaining 15 notes. 19.Global Witness, Time for Transparency, March 2004, p. 44. 20.Over $160 million went to an account called “Treasury Ministry of Finance” in Moscow, though knowledgeable sources in Switzerland told me that despite its name, this account may have been a front, with other interests behind it. 21.Le Monde, April 3, 2002: “Le règlement de la dette angolaise aurait donné lieu à des détournements de fonds,” quoted in Global Witness, Time for Transparency, March 2004. I asked Gaydamak if the money had simply disappeared into private pockets, offshore.

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When a kleptocrat loots his country and shifts the looted wealth offshore, the banks, accountants, and law firms that assist him are just as guilty as the kleptocrat. When a client gets caught and goes to jail, so should his or her relationship manager, accountant, trustee, lawyer, and corporate nominee. A few organizations like London-based Global Witness have sought to call these intermediaries to account—but we now need a sea change in the world’s approach. Get serious with these people at last. As regards the end users of offshore services, many strategies are needed. I will mention just one. Its awful-sounding name—Combined Reporting with Formula Apportionment and Unitary Taxation—masks a simple, powerful, and straightforward approach to tax, which California already uses successfully to confront transfer pricing abuses.

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Sikka also provides a useful in-depth examination of the BCCI affair in Austin Mitchell, Prem Sikka, Patricia Arnold, Christine Cooper, and Hugh Will-mott, “The BCCI Cover-Up,” Association for Accountancy & Business Affairs, 2001, http://visar.csustan.edu/aaba/BCCICOVERUP.pdf. 14.Author’s interview with Morgenthau, May 4, 2009; and “More Offshore Tax Probes in Works: NY’s Morgenthau,” Reuters, April 27, 2009. 15.See the author’s Poisoned Wells: The Dirty Politics of African Oil (New York: Palgrave, 2007). 16.French magistrates issued an international arrest warrant for Gaydamak in January 2001, and he moved to Moscow; in October 2009 he was convicted in absentia for arms trafficking, fraud, and tax offenses. Gaydamak says the magistrates used forged documents and said he owed no French taxes because he had been resident in London at the time in question. Author’s interview with Gaydamak, and Le Monde, December 8, 2000, cited in Global Witness, All the President’s Men, 2002, p. 26. 17.The arms he helped finance did, it is true, hasten victory over UNITA, though not everyone would agree that helping supply arms constitutes “bringing peace.” Gaydamak had recently bought the Israeli football team Hapoel and a basketball team, Betar Jerusalem, with, he said, political aims. 18.Russia agreed, with Gaydamak’s help, to cut the debt down to just $1.5 billion, sliced into 31 promissory notes with a face value of $48.3 million each.

Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power by Steve Coll

addicted to oil, Alan Greenspan, An Inconvenient Truth, anti-communist, Atul Gawande, banking crisis, Benchmark Capital, Berlin Wall, call centre, carbon footprint, carbon tax, clean water, collapse of Lehman Brothers, company town, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, decarbonisation, disinformation, energy security, European colonialism, Evgeny Morozov, Exxon Valdez, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial engineering, Global Witness, Google Earth, Great Leap Forward, hydraulic fracturing, hydrogen economy, Ida Tarbell, illegal immigration, income inequality, industrial robot, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), inventory management, kremlinology, market fundamentalism, McMansion, medical malpractice, Mikhail Gorbachev, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, peak oil, place-making, Ponzi scheme, precautionary principle, price mechanism, profit maximization, profit motive, Ronald Reagan, Saturday Night Live, Scramble for Africa, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, smart meter, statistical model, Steve Jobs, two and twenty, WikiLeaks

A warlord running a teetering state surrendered prerogatives of his office in exchange for the private capital and cutting-edge technology he required to strengthen his reign. A multilateral lending institution brokered the agreement and afterward contracted with the London office of a global bank, Citigroup, to manage and control most of the revenues due to the warlord’s government. Oxfam, Catholic Relief Services, Global Witness, and other worldwide antipoverty campaigners organized conferences at which they taught Chadian civil society activists how to secure their rights. ExxonMobil, having conceived and financed the oil project in the first instance, and having achieved its business aims after more than two decades of effort, now moved to produce oil on a schedule of its choosing and under contract terms that enshrined its rights ahead of those of the Chadian government.

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The extensive investigations into climate science policy carried out by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee brought forward numerous internal government records. The Union of Concerned Scientists, Greenpeace, and other environmentalist investigators have also obtained and published important government and industry documents on climate policy, from which I was able to draw. Oxfam, Global Witness, Catholic Relief Services, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Coventry Cathedral, and the International Crisis Group have published valuable investigations of conflicts and corporate responsibility issues in Africa and Asia that I sought to explore. Securities and Exchange Commission filings provided extensive data about ExxonMobil’s oil and gas production, reserves, and financial reporting.

…

Moats, ExxonMobil Corporation, “Business Practices & Transparency,” PowerPoint presentation, September 28, 2006. 17. Interview with an ExxonMobil executive. 18. Ibid. 19. Teodoro Obiang Nguema acknowledged forty-two children: Malabo to Washington, March 10, 2009. Field of Dreams, Gabriel Obiang’s development plans: Interviews with individuals familiar with Gabriel’s statements and thinking. 20. Global Witness, “Undue Diligence: How Banks Do Business with Corrupt Regimes,” March 2009. United States Senate, Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs: “Keeping Foreign Corruption Out of the United States, Four Case Histories,” Majority and Minority Staff Report, February 4, 2010. 21.

Among Chimpanzees by Nancy J. Merrick

biodiversity loss, carbon footprint, clean water, cloud computing, crowdsourcing, experimental subject, Global Witness, Google Earth, impulse control, language acquisition, microcredit, profit motive, the scientific method

Some environmentally minded businesspeople have been promoting greater corporate responsibility for decades. One nonprofit organization, Ceres, mobilizes investors and business leadership to promote sustainability. Its Investor Network on Climate Risk, for example, influences one hundred leading investors who collectively manage more than $10 trillion in assets. Meanwhile, groups like Global Witness are reporting to the world on the impact of corruption and conflict minerals and calling on businesses to ensure that their products do not use these minerals, and a global coalition known as Transparency International includes among its purposes holding companies accountable for their business practices, both abroad and at home.

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An uproar must be raised against companies that grow unsustainable products like tobacco on African soil and against corporations irresponsibly violating international agreements or degrading critical habitats in order to obtain oil and other resources. Support the efforts of groups like Ceres and Global Witness and conservation organizations that promote greater corporate responsibility or draw attention to violations. Be familiar with the corporate responsibility of businesses you support through mutual funds or stock purchases. 4. EXERT YOUR POWER AS A CONSUMER Be sure that the companies you buy from are environmentally minded.

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Michael, 202–4 Fifi (chimpanzee), 31, 48, 63, 66, 73, 75, 193 fission-fusion society of chimps, 64–65 Flint (chimpanzee), 66, 67–68 Flo family, 65–68 Forest Stewardship Council, 105, 154, 216 Forest Walk at Ngamba Island, 8–12 Fossey, Dian, 42, 52; death of, 113; legacy of, 116; opposition to ecotourism, 111 Fouts, Roger, 79, 169 Gabon, 200–201 Gadsby, Liza, 134 GAFI (Great Apes Film Initiative), 105, 149–50 Galdikas, Birute, 52 Garamba National Park, 153 Gardner, Allen and Beatrix, 78, 79 Gishwati Forest Preserve, 115 Global Forest Watch 2.0, 209, 212 Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, 211 Global Witness, 210, 216 Gobbo, Grace, 196–97 Goblin (chimpanzee), 89 Gombe National Park, 3; arrival in Kigoma, 27–29; author’s return to and tour of the camp, 30–32, 38; changes due to population growth, 37–38; chimp activity, 31–32, 36–37; conservation imperative, 38–39 Gombe Stream Research Center: adventures during the author’s stay, 88–89; author’s arrival to start study participation, 52–55; author’s departure from Africa, 89–90; author’s interest in chimps, xiv–xv; banana delivery routine at Pan Palace, 60–61; camp accommodations and layout, 53–54, 59–60; chimp escapades, 59, 60; chimp observation experiences, 56–59, 62–64, 69–70; Conservation Action Plan, 197–98; drop in chimp population over the years, 196; early days of research, 70–71; efforts to partner with local villages to secure the forests, 196–97; evidence that the community was in trouble, 101; extinction crisis, 200–201; geographic information available from satellites, 195–96; Jane Goodall’s workload, 86–87; journey to the center, 49–51; Kobi’s transfer to a sanctuary, 79–80; legacy of its primatologists, 74–75; lessons in East African life, 87–88; mother-infant interactions, 57, 58–59, 74; residents, 61; size of the protected area, 194, 197; supply trip to Kigoma, 81–85; threats to the reserve, 193–95, 196; trauma of the kidnapping of students, 93–94, 157–59 Gombe West (Stanford Outdoor Primate Facility), 91, 158 Goodall, Jane, xiii; advocacy for ending biomedical research with chimps, 171; author’s first meeting with, 3, 4, 54–55; author’s meeting with, in San Francisco, 108–9; documentary on, 47–48; early days of Gombe research, 70–71; founding of youth organization (see Roots & Shoots); gracious nature, 85; guiding principles of, 227–28; hope for the future, 26, 213–14; impact on the world, 228–29; inspiration of her presence, 48–49; lecture of despair, 224–25; Messenger of Peace position, 227; partnership with Mike Fay, 203–4; reunion with, at Gombe, 32–36; sponsors of her work, 71; toughness of, 33, 36; workload at Gombe, 86–87.

The Joy of Tax by Richard Murphy

banking crisis, banks create money, carbon tax, carried interest, correlation does not imply causation, en.wikipedia.org, failed state, full employment, Gini coefficient, Global Witness, green new deal, high net worth, Jeremy Corbyn, land value tax, means of production, Modern Monetary Theory, Money creation, offshore financial centre, price elasticity of demand, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, savings glut, seigniorage, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, transfer pricing

So suddenly what was hidden in these havens completely beyond view will become transparent. And the same transparency is also being created across the EU and beyond. The change is dramatic, and very welcome. But the change is not restricted to the tax haven world. Again, pretty much as a result of the work of tax campaigners like the Tax Justice Network and Global Witness, pressure has been brought to bear on the UK government and the governments of many other places, including tax havens, to ensure that their registries of companies include details of the beneficial owners of those companies and not just those persons who lend their name as nominees to be recorded on public record.

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K. 51 GDP 171 debt and 213 and economy 84 fiscal policy and 58–9 government spending as proportion of 76+n, 77, 81–2 taxation as proportion of 34–5 General Anti-Abuse Rule 112, 113, 224 General Anti-Avoidance Principle, proposed 224 Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, UK 222 gifts 183, 184 gilts 49–52 Gini coefficient 63n global warming see climate change global wealth tax 190 Global Witness 124 Google 135 government(s) 27, 39–40 balancing books/budget 52, 60–1, 76, 86–7, 94–5, 212–13, 238 borrowing 89 businesses, mistaken analogy with 86–7, 89 and creation of money 49, 209–10 demand for services to be supplied by 157–60 and the economy 104, 156–60, 170, 210 (see also austerity) intervention following 2008 crash 78, 79 and ownership 59 participation and 31, 37–44 spending see government spending states without 32 surpluses 58, 59, 60, 76–8, 130 and ‘taxpayers’ money’ 39–44 see also democracy government debt 46, 49–52, 59–60, 87, 213–14 government spending and business success 185 effects of cutting 89–90 flat taxes and 75 need for 95–6, 210 relationship to taxation 45, 52–5, 80–4, 162, 210, 211–12, 214 Greece 148 Green New Deal Group 9, 10 Green parties 84, 94 growth 83, 84, 90, 104, 158, 170, 171–2, 215 Guernsey 124 harmonization, international 133 health services 64, 158, 168 see also NHS Heritage Foundation 35 HM Treasury 109, 110–11, 114, 117 HMRC 112–14, 116, 119–21 access to 118–21, 202–3 and accountability 116–18, 203, 204–6, 218–20 attitudes 119–20 on compliance 33–4, 35, 67 and data exchange 123–4, 127 and research 108, 110 staff and resources 113, 120–1, 202–4 structure and governance 203–4, 219, 220 Hodge, Margaret 114, 117 horizontal equity 138–9, 197 House of Commons Library 109 House of Commons Select Committees 205, 220–1 see also Public Accounts Committee and Treasury Committee house prices 185–6, 214, 225–6, 229 housing 159, 175–6, 186, 225–7, 228–9, 238 housing support 192, 194, 229 identity theft 201 ignorance 68, 108 illegitimate economic activity 56 imports 88 income(s) 180–1 falling in real terms 83, 90 sources of 138–9 taxation and 31 under-declaration of 98–9 income tax 14, 16, 65, 163–5, 230 citizen’s income and 193–4 higher rates 73 as proportion of tax paid 28, 29, 30, 72 schedular form 152 tithing and 15 as universal 235 voting and 65 inequality 63n, 74 see also equity/equality and redistribution inflation 46, 53, 54, 57, 59, 61, 182, 210 flat taxes and 75 house prices and 185–6 influence 31, 37 information exchange 123–4, 127, 184 infrastructure 158–9, 229 inheritance taxes 15, 29, 31, 73, 183, 226 innovation 136–7 Institute of Directors 68–9, 72 Institute of Economic Affairs 68–9, 70–1, 101 Institute for Fiscal Studies 109 insurance premiums 29, 223 interest 51, 52n, 58, 181–2 banks and 49, 50 monetary policy and 59 money and 51 tax and 30, 196, 223, 228–9, 231 interests 69, 70, 71, 109, 113, 116 conflicts of 115 government and 19, 44 intergenerational contract 143 International Financial Reporting Standards 222 International Financial Reporting Standards Foundation 199 international issues 133–6, 197–8 see also tax havens interpretation 111–12, 153 investment 89, 176, 234 savings and 209, 231 investment income 72, 98, 99, 138, 163, 180, 224, 231–2 Ireland 126, 134, 146, 163 ISAs 175, 231 Jersey 10, 124, 126 Jesus 16 Joffe, Lord 114–15 Kennedy, John F. 32n labour, taxing 190 see also national insurance land ownership 185 land value tax, proposed 186–7, 227–8 land-based taxes 15, 16, 21, 163, 164, 185–7 landfill tax 31 landlords 228, 229 language 115–16, 153, 196, 218 law 36–7, 39, 148, 153 complexity 154, 217 letter and spirit of 112, 153, 154, 218 purposive basis 112, 217–18 law and order 132, 159 Lawson, Nigel 182 lawyers 69, 102, 114, 116, 217 liability 184, 221, 225, 226 see also companies libertarians and libertarian views 39–40, 42, 68–80, 132 life expectancy 167n, 168 Lincoln, Abraham 61+n living standards/needs 35, 57, 61, 141–4, 168 loans 47–8+nn, 49–52, 208, 209 repayment of 49, 50, 53 local government 65, 186 see also council tax London, City of 18–19, 187 loopholes 97, 112, 153–4, 168, 187, 196, 197 Luxembourg 126, 134–5, 146 macroeconomics 85, 87–8, 161, 165, 170–1 Magna Carta 18–19, 22, 37, 131 Man, Isle of 124, 126 marginal tax rates 145, 172–3, 174, 192, 194, 235 markets, government policy/taxation and 58–9, 61, 63–4, 170–1, 187–8, 191, 212, 215, 236 marriage 24–5, 225 Mazzucato, Mariana 136 Meacher, Michael 153–4 media comment 157, 158 microeconomics, misapplication to government 86–7 middle ground in politics 157–8 minimal-state ideology 155–6, 158 Mirrlees Review 109 misconceptions 86 mistrust 152, 154 Mitchell, Dan 134 monarchy 20–2, 117, 219 monetary policy 58, 59–60 money 46–7 creation of 45–52+nn, 53, 86–7, 181–2, 208–9, 214 debt and 213 decreasing value to individuals 144–5, 181 destruction of 48n, 49, 53, 213 and the economy 209 equivalence 181, 224, 233 importance of 57 profit and 48–9 promises and 49, 51, 56 tax and 14, 56–7, 85–8, 180 value of 56–7, 66 see also bank transactions and financial transactions mortgages 89, 228–9 MPs, resources available to 109–10, 112 multinational companies 124–7, 150–2, 198, 201, 222 Murphy, Richard 110, 112, 113, 126, 131n, 153–4, 192, 203n mutuality 133 nation states 23, 24, 25–7, 35 National Audit Office 205 national debt 46, 52, 76, 213 national insurance 167–9, 172–3, 189, 232 and benefits system 189, 191 as proportion of tax paid 29, 161, 169, 189 proposals for replacing 72, 164, 189, 190, 194, 232–3 and unearned income 231–2 needs 57, 141–4 see also sufficiency Netherlands, the 126, 135, 146 NGOs 110 NHS 158, 167, 189 Northern Ireland 166 objectivity 105 OECD 125, 126, 134n, 150, 151 Office for Budget Responsibility 52, 91–3, 205 Office for Tax Responsibility, proposed 205, 220–1 offshore arrangements 99–100, 190 oil 35, 63 opacity see secrecy Osborne, George 59, 76–8, 82, 90–1, 174 overdrafts 48 ownership, tax and 38–44 Oxford Centre for Business Taxation 108–9, 110 Oxford Dictionary, definition of tax 30–2, 35–6, 37, 43 Paine, Thomas 24 parties, political 84, 94 partnerships, business 42 partnerships (marriage) 24–5, 225 Paul, St 16 Pay As You Earn 167, 173 PCS (Public and Commercial Services Union) 203n peace 131–3, 136, 137 Peasants’ Revolt (1381) 20, 37 pension funds 50, 60 pensioners 72, 232 pensions 143, 167, 168, 174–5, 189, 192, 235 citizen’s income and 192 personal allowances 72, 193, 230, 235 Pickett, Kate 145 Piketty, Thomas 190 Plaid Cymru 84, 94 plutocracy 71 politicians 84–5 poll taxes 15, 16, 20, 33, 37, 186 pollution 63, 191, 212 poverty 192, 194 power 17, 20, 23 price elasticity of demand 64 product safety 159 profit, banking and 48–9 profit-shifting 134–5 proof, onus of 196, 217, 224 property taxation and 31, 39–44, 54, 71 see also council tax, housing and land property rights 39, 41, 42–3, 132 protest 33, 37 see also conflict Public Accounts Committee, House of Commons 109, 114, 117, 204 public spending see government spending Quaker beliefs 10, 131n quantitative easing 46, 47n, 49–52, 58, 60, 229–30, 238 Rabushka, Alvin 78–9 recession 78, 79–80, 191 reciprocal rights and double tax treaties 223 reclamation see under tax/taxation redistribution 62–3, 66, 144, 185, 230, 238 Reed, Howard 192 representation, taxation and 19–20, 22–7, 31, 37–8, 65, 66, 70–1 repricing, tax as 64, 66 research 108–10, 135–6, 236 responsibility 39 retirement, saving for 174–5, 231 see also pensions right-wing views 68–80, 156–7, 158 rioting 33 road use 191 Roman Empire 15–16 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 26–7 royalties 181, 223 sales taxes 15–16, 163, 187 see also VAT saving 59, 87, 89+n, 90–1, 172 investment and 209 tax and 175, 231 schools 108 Scotland 33, 37, 166 independence referendum (2014) 23, 24, 26, 128–9 Scottish National Party 84, 94 secrecy 69, 99, 122, 151, 152, 201 secrecy jurisdictions 135 seigniorage 182 self-employed people 98, 167, 168, 173 shadow economy 55–6, 146–8 shareholders 200–1, 233 simplicity 133, 152–5, 218, 230, 236 of money creation 51 see also flat taxes Singapore 126 skills, funding 136–7 Smith, Adam 24, 70, 129–31, 137 smuggling 14, 163 social contract 26–7, 132–3 social mores, taxation and 24–7 social security systems 191–2 see also welfare benefits socialism 157 speculation 171, 185, 187, 214, 224 Spirit Level, The 145 stamp duty 29, 73, 187, 228 Starbucks 135 states and statehood 23, 24, 25–7 extent of role 156–60 see also government(s) stigma 194, 235 student loans 173–4 subjectivity 105 sufficiency 141–4 sustainability 57, 215 Switzerland 135 tax/taxation acceptance of 25–6, 32–8, 67–8, 96 administration of 16, 123, 219–21 (see also HMRC) alternatives to 45–7 and choice 68, 96, 103, 106, 126–9 as counterbalance 53–5 definitions and perceptions of 30–2, 35–6, 37, 40–4 education concerning 102, 106–8 efficient 160–1 embracing 25, 27, 44, 238 functions 55–66 history 13–26 inclusivity and default 196, 217 indirect 74 ownership 38–44, 216 payment in kind 14, 15, 16 political context 37–9, 105 process, stages of 122–3 progressive 15, 139, 145, 181, 189, 230 and property 39–44, 54 as proportion of income 74–5 range of and proportions of revenue raised in UK 28, 29 reasons and purposes for 52–66, 160, 178 as reclamation of money spent 52–5, 75, 81, 180, 210 regressive 139, 189–90, 227, 237 responsibility for 219 right to spend 39 scope of 196, 217 unacceptable 33, 37 see also under government spending tax abuse 14, 16, 96–102, 103, 168, 195–6 victims of 101 see also tax avoidance and tax evasion tax avoidance 43, 96–7, 99–102, 103, 110, 173, 198 anti-avoidance principle 112, 113, 196 flat taxes and 74 proposed legislation against 153–4, 224, 236 tax base(s) 16, 31, 122, 179, 222–3 defining 179, 196 finding 197, 201 inclusive 195–7, 217 inconsistent 183 tax competition 133–4, 135–6 tax design 169 tax evasion 43, 69, 96–9, 100–1, 103, 110 tax gap 110, 220 tax havens 35, 69, 99–102, 123–4, 126, 134, 135–6, 201–2 registration of companies in 151 and secrecy 149–50 UK and 146, 174 wealth taxes and 184 tax justice 220 tax justice movement 149, 151, 184, 201 Tax Justice Network 9, 124 tax offices 118–21 tax policy 156, 229–30 tax reliefs 25, 97, 165, 175, 176, 196 Tax Reporting Standards Board, proposed 222 Tax Research Network 109 Tax Responsibility, Office for, proposed 205, 220–1 Tax Select Committee, proposed 205 tax systems 129–55, 168–9, 171, 178–80, 224 Taxation, Department of, proposed 219–21, 227 Taxation and State-Building in Developing Countries (Brautigam et al.) 26n Taxpayers’ Alliance 68–9, 70, 72 ‘taxpayers’ money’ 39–44, 216 Teather, Richard 101 technology 135–6, 176 temporary residence rule, proposed 197, 222 tenants 228, 229 Thatcher, Margaret 33, 68, 70, 86, 101 theft 36, 43, 44 tithing 15 tobacco 64, 74, 191 trade deficit 89 transparency 123–7, 216 transport 158–9, 176, 191 Treasury Committee, House of Commons 117 tribunals 118 trust 119–20, 148–9, 152, 154 trusts 42, 184 truth 30, 52, 84, 133, 146–52 Turner, Adair 52n 2020 Tax Commission 72, 75, 76 Tyler, Wat 20 UK aggregate tax rate 35 proportion of tax taken by different taxes 28, 29, 139 right to leave 32 shadow economy 146 and tax havens 146, 174 tax paid by income decile 139–40 UK GAAP 222 ‘UK plc’ 86 UK political parties 84, 94, 157–8 unemployment, effects 83, 89 universal credit 174 universities 107–9 US dollar 55–6 USA, Declaration of Independence 22–3, 24, 26 VAT 64, 74, 174, 187, 189, 236–7 exemptions 64, 236 as proportion of tax paid 29, 161 vertical equity 139 Virgin Islands, British 124 voting rates 42, 65 Walmart 150 Walmsley, Brad 70–1 wars 18, 53, 131–2 wealth concentration of 185 taxation and 28–30, 31, 73–4, 180–7, 190–1 Wealth of Nations, The (Smith) 24, 129–31 wealth taxes 16, 123, 163, 165, 183–7 global 190, 226–7 proposed 226–7, 228 see also financial transactions tax welfare benefits 62–3, 167 interaction/integration with tax 142, 174, 191–5, 234–6 national insurance and 189 unclaimed 194 as universal 235 welfare state 142–3 well-being, taxation and 35, 61 Wilkinson, Richard 145 work 194–5, 238 see also employment World Economic Forum 74 Worstall, Tim 71 Zimbabwe 35 About the Author Richard Murphy is a UK chartered accountant.

The Plundered Planet: Why We Must--And How We Can--Manage Nature for Global Prosperity by Paul Collier

agricultural Revolution, Berlin Wall, business climate, carbon tax, Doha Development Round, energy security, food miles, G4S, Global Witness, information asymmetry, Kenneth Arrow, megacity, new economy, offshore financial centre, oil shock, price elasticity of demand, profit maximization, rent-seeking, Ronald Coase, Scramble for Africa, search costs, sovereign wealth fund, stem cell, Stewart Brand, Tragedy of the Commons

The individual incentive to plunder can be countered when each decision is viewed as a potential weak link, and the enormous benefits to getting it right seen clearly. While the international community cannot tell the governments of resource-rich countries what to do, it can make it much easier for societies to build that critical mass of informed opinion. The place to start is in making public the potential revenues from resource extraction. The small NGO Global Witness ran a campaign, Publish What You Pay, which pioneered the idea of a voluntary international standard for reporting revenues. That campaign has now evolved into an international organization, the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI). The organization is run by a consortium of stakeholders and sets voluntary standards which governments can adopt.

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See also bio-fuels; oil future generations and carbon emissions, 200–202 compensation of, 31–32, 33–34, 114, 121, 155–56, 201–2, 203 and consumption, 111 and custody principle, 112–13, 114, 155–56 and extinction, 161 and fishing, 170 and nonrenewable natural assets, 155–56 obligations to, 112, 115, 119 (see also custody principle) and ownership of assets, 31 and renewable natural assets, 155, 156, 161 rights of, 98 sympathies for, 26 and Utilitarianism, 24–25 Gabon, 122 Gaidar, Yegor, 234 game parks, 166 Gauthier, Bernard, 81, 82 G5, 190, 191, 192, 193 G20, 40, 219 G163, 191 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), 225 genetically modified crops, 209, 219–23, 224 geographic proximity principle, 167–68 geological surveys, 69–70, 74–75, 127 Germany, 238 gesture politics, 7 Ghana, 74, 108 global markets, 239 global warming. See climate change Global Witness, 231–32 Goderis, Benedikt, xiv, 38–40, 44, 52, 144 gold and gold rushes, 21, 68, 75, 89 governance and governments and auctions, 83–84 and borrowing for early consumption, 110 forests (Continued) and bottom billion countries, 6 and carbon emissions, 198–99 and charter for natural resources, 230–35 contracts with, 71–74, 85 and corruption, 79, 80, 82–83 decision chains in, 60–62 and discovery process, 69–71 and extraction rights, 73, 74, 75, 83–84 and free-riding, 188–91 and growth, 53–54 and investments, 134 and management of natural assets, 22–23 and nonmarket social cooperation, 175 and OECD countries, 7 phasing sale of natural assets, 75 and pork-barrel politics, 22–23 quality of, 7, 60, 229–30 and regulation, 5–6 and renewable natural assets, 166–67 and resource curse, 46–49 and resource extraction, 92–93 and revenues, 50–53, 59, 100, 101 and scarcity, 229–35 and threshold effects, 60 and time-inconsistency problem, 71–74 See also taxation greed, 10 Green Accounting, 120–21 Greenland, 30 Green Revolution, 222 growth and food crises, 209–10 low-carbon growth, 179–83, 184, 192, 197 and resource revenues, 52–54 and sustainability, 98 Growth Commission, 138, 233 Guinea, 242 Haiti, xiii, 19, 201, 208 Harvard Business Review, 132 hidden assets, 19–20 high-income countries, 184–85, 197, 211 high seas, 162, 169 Himalayas, 189 Hispaniola, 19 Hoeffer, Anke, xiv and checks and balances, 55 and distribution of assets, 20–21 and elections, 56, 59 and neo-con agenda paper, 49 and resource curse, 53 and subsoil assets, 65 Holbach, Paul Henri Thiry, baron d’, 7, 16 Hotelling Rule, 104–7, 155, 194 Human Development Index, 109 human nature, 33 hunger, 207–9 Iceland, 164, 169 I Didn’t Do It for You (Wrong), 159 imports, 100–101 income-elasticity, 210 India, 57, 139, 238 indigenous populations, 215 Indonesia, 93, 238 indulgences, 176 Industrial Development Report, 184–85 industry and carbon emissions, 180, 182, 183–85, 190, 192, 195, 196–97 globalization of, 3 industrial output, 184–85 and prosperity, 196 of rich countries, 65 and romantic environmentalists, 16 inefficiency, 21, 22 inequality, 21, 22, 29 information sharing, 239–41 infrastructure in Africa, 91–92, 122–25, 140–41 and changing needs, 138 innovation, 214 international coordination, 237–43 International Country Risk Guide (ICRG), 46, 47 International Monetary Fund (IMF) Bird-in-the-Hand Rule of, 107, 109, 110 on domestic investment, 128, 133 on future revenues, 107 general policy advice of, 61 and global coordination, 232 on investments, 128, 133, 144 on Permanent Income concept, 102 on savings rate, 102, 108 international organizations, 233 international territories, 29–30 international waters, 162, 163, 167 Internet, 234 Inuit people, 30, 34, 175 investments, 127–49 and absorption problems, 128, 133 and capital goods, 147–49 and corruption, 128–30, 131 government policies on, 145 IMF on, 128, 133 international investments, 117 Norway model of, 109, 113–14, 117–18, 128, 143 opportunities for, 132–34 private investment, 113, 131, 132, 134, 142–46 public investment, 113, 131, 134–42 rate of return on, 132–33 and resource curse, 48 and role model countries, 137–38 and supervision of projects, 141–42 volatility of, 118, 119 in world financial markets, 117, 122, 128, 133 See also domestic investment Iraq, 49–50 Italy, 158–59, 238 Japan, 190, 219, 238 Jesus, 33 Johnson-Sirleaf, Ellen, 55 Jones, Benjamin, 59 just-in-time production, 216 Kazakhstan, 143 Kenya, 223 Keynes, John Maynard, 41 Korea, 238 Kosmos Oil, 74 Kuwait, 20, 32, 133 Kyoto conference on climate change, 183 Lagos, Nigeria, 139, 140, 141 land, 147–48, 217–19 landlocked countries, 168 leaders, 59, 93 legal system, 80, 82 liabilities, 174–75, 178.

Overbooked: The Exploding Business of Travel and Tourism by Elizabeth Becker

airport security, Asian financial crisis, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, BRICs, car-free, carbon footprint, clean water, collective bargaining, colonial rule, computer age, corporate governance, Costa Concordia, Deng Xiaoping, European colonialism, Exxon Valdez, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Frank Gehry, global village, Global Witness, Great Leap Forward, happiness index / gross national happiness, haute cuisine, high-speed rail, indoor plumbing, Kickstarter, Masdar, Murano, Venice glass, open borders, out of africa, race to the bottom, Ralph Nader, Scramble for Africa, Silicon Valley, statistical model, sustainable-tourism, the market place, union organizing, urban renewal, wage slave, young professional, éminence grise

“This group had a very strong claim”: Author interview with Mathieu Pellerin, April 24, 2010. There is nothing hidden about this epidemic: Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, U.N. Commission on Human Rights, 42nd Session, Geneva, May 4–22, 2009, http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/cescr/cescrs42.htm. Global witness, the nonprofit: “Country for Sale,” a Global Witness Report, February 2009, http://www.globalwitness.org/sites/default/files/library/country_for_sale_low_res_english. Also, Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark, “Country for Sale,” The Guardian, April 26, 2008, www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/apr/26/Cambodia. “I have to make a decision”: Kay Kimsong and Lee Berthiaume, “P.M.

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In 2009 the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights called for a moratorium on further evictions and said it was “gravely concerned over reports that since the year 2000, over 100,000 people were evicted in Phnom Penh alone; that at least 150,000 Cambodians continue to live under threat of forced eviction; and that authorities of the State party are actively involved in land-grabbing. . . . ” Global Witness, the nonprofit British advocacy group, has documented how 45 percent of the country’s land has been deeded to private interests through these land grabs. (Land is also grabbed to sell to agribusinesses as plantations, to mining companies, to logging firms and, recently, to oil and gas companies.)

Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry by Peter Warren Singer

Apollo 13, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, blood diamond, borderless world, British Empire, colonial rule, conceptual framework, disinformation, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial independence, full employment, Global Witness, Jean Tirole, joint-stock company, Machinery of Freedom by David Friedman, market friction, military-industrial complex, moral hazard, Nelson Mandela, new economy, no-fly zone, offshore financial centre, Peace of Westphalia, principal–agent problem, prisoner's dilemma, private military company, profit maximization, profit motive, RAND corporation, risk/return, rolodex, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Scramble for Africa, South China Sea, supply-chain management, The Nature of the Firm, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, vertical integration

"Gunships for Hire," Right International (August 2 K l Qqti): 32; Al J. Venten "Sierra Leone's Mercenary War." Janes International Defense Revieio (November 1995). 21. Rubin, "Army of One's Own.'' p. 46. 22. EO webpage. 23. Ibid. 24. "Crude Awakening: The Role of the Oil and Banking Industries in Angola's Civil War and the Plunder of State Assets," A report by Global Witness (February 2000). Available at: http://mvAV.oneworId.org/globalwitness/ 2.^. Ibid.; UN Development Programme. UK Human Deiwlopmenl Index 2000. Available at http://u^ww.undp.org/hdr2ooo/english/HDR200o.html 26. Arnalclo Simoes, Africa Portuguesa: A Colonizacao Constrain e a Descolonizacao? (Torres Novas: Grafica Almondina, 1998).

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L (January 2000). 8 j. Venter, "Market Forces." 8x. GouleL "Mixing Business With Bullets." 86. William Reno, Warload Politics and African States (London: Lynne Riennen 1998). 87. "Crude Awakening: The Role of the Oil and Banking Industries in Angola's Civil War and the Plunder of State Assets," a report by Global Witness, February 2000, available at http://u^w.oncworld.org/globahvitness/ 88. Samuel Aoul et al. "Towards a Spiral of VioIence?-The Dangers of Privatizing Risk Management in Africa." Memorandum, Working Group on Human Rights in Congo Development and Peace, Mining Watch Canada. February 2000. 89. "Crude Awakening." 90.

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Australian Broadcasting Corporation, August 20, 2000. http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/ bbing/siOyi io.htm Croatian Foreign Press Bureau. Daily Bulletin, July 15, 1996. Cross, Tim. "Logistic Support for UK Expeditionaiy Operations." RUSI Journal, February 2000. "Crude Awakening: The Role of the Oil and Banking Industries in Angola's Civil War and the Plunder of State Assets." A report by Global Witness. February 2000. Available at lutp://www.oneworld.org/globalwitness/ Cullen, Patrick }. "Keeping the New Dog of War on a Tight Lease." Conflict Trends, no. 6 (July 2000). hltp://w\\rw.accord.org./a/piiblications/ct6/issuc6-htm Daley, Paul. "Civilians May Form Special Reserve." The Age (Melbourne), April 2ti, 2000. http://www.theage.com.au/.

Deep Sea and Foreign Going by Rose George

Admiral Zheng, air freight, Airbus A320, Albert Einstein, bank run, cable laying ship, Captain Sullenberger Hudson, Costa Concordia, Edward Lloyd's coffeehouse, Exxon Valdez, failed state, Filipino sailors, global supply chain, Global Witness, Google Earth, intermodal, Jones Act, London Whale, Malacca Straits, Panamax, pattern recognition, profit maximization, Skype, trade route, UNCLOS, UNCLOS, urban planning, WikiLeaks, William Langewiesche

id=07SUVA169&q=cook-islands 10 A pet dog trained to carry registry documents Brad Berman’s paper ‘Does the UNCTAD Convention on the Registration of Ships need amending?’ is available on the ITF website at http://www.itfglobal.org/seafarers/icons-site/ images/120_BERMAN.pdf. – Funding rebels in neighbouring Sierra Leone According to an investigation by Global Witness, a group that investigates resource exploitation, after Charles Taylor came to power in Liberia in 1997, he launched a court action against IRI, the company that had run Liberia’s shipping registry for 40 years. The new company, the Liberian International Ship and Corporate Register, was linked to Taylor’s lawyers.

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Not only that: one container, which Taylor claimed contained presents for his wife, contained armaments, according to a witness present at its unloading. A UN expert panel on Sierra Leone condemned the Taylor government for ‘the improper use of its maritime registry’. When I searched the website of LISCR for ‘Charles Taylor’, I found no results. Global Witness/ITF, Taylor-made: The pivotal role of Liberia’s forests and flag of convenience in regional conflict, September 2001. – Cat’s cradles ‘Brassed Off: How the war on terrorism could change the shape of shipping’, The Economist, 16 May 2002. 11 Russian doll of ownership Cour d’Appel de Paris, pôle 4 chambre 11E, n° RG 08/02278, arrêt rendu le 30 mars 2010

Billion Dollar Whale: The Man Who Fooled Wall Street, Hollywood, and the World by Tom Wright, Bradley Hope

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Asian financial crisis, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, Boeing 747, collapse of Lehman Brothers, colonial rule, corporate social responsibility, Credit Default Swap, Donald Trump, failed state, family office, financial engineering, forensic accounting, Frank Gehry, Global Witness, high net worth, junk bonds, low interest rates, Michael Milken, middle-income trap, Nick Leeson, offshore financial centre, Oscar Wyatt, Ponzi scheme, Right to Buy, risk tolerance, Savings and loan crisis, Snapchat, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, Virgin Galactic

., and European banks charged for selling bonds for governments in the region—work that was considered easy and risk free, in part because governments are less likely to default than companies. The huge profit was a coup for Goldman. But the deal also caught the attention of Global Witness, an international watchdog, which questioned why a major Wall Street bank was dealing with a government known for corruption and environmental crimes. In a report, Global Witness claimed some of the contracts funded by the bonds were going to Chief Minister Taib’s relatives, which might have explained why the government wanted the money so quickly and was willing to overpay. The transaction in Sarawak was the first time Leissner, the relationship banker, had joined forces with Vella, the derivatives whiz, to deliver a major amount of money to a client, quietly and fast, while making large profits for Goldman.

The Land Grabbers: The New Fight Over Who Owns the Earth by Fred Pearce

activist lawyer, Asian financial crisis, banking crisis, big-box store, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, blood diamond, British Empire, Buy land – they’re not making it any more, Cape to Cairo, carbon credits, carbon footprint, clean water, company town, corporate raider, credit crunch, Deng Xiaoping, Elliott wave, en.wikipedia.org, energy security, farmers can use mobile phones to check market prices, Garrett Hardin, Global Witness, index fund, Jeff Bezos, Kickstarter, Kondratiev cycle, land reform, land tenure, Mahatma Gandhi, market fundamentalism, megacity, megaproject, Mohammed Bouazizi, Nelson Mandela, Nikolai Kondratiev, offshore financial centre, out of africa, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, Ronald Reagan, smart cities, structural adjustment programs, too big to fail, Tragedy of the Commons, undersea cable, urban planning, urban sprawl, vertical integration, WikiLeaks

But so did Taylor, who had stumbled on a system for getting timber companies to fund his warlord economy. Investigators after the war uncovered a check for almost $2 billion dated July 2000 from one of Oriental Timber’s subsidiaries, Natural Holdings, and made out to Charles G. Taylor’s personal checking account. The NGO Global Witness, which investigated the imbroglio, named other timber companies with Liberian logging concessions at the time. They included the Royal Timber Company, with Mr. Gus as a director; the Inland Logging Company, run by Taylor’s associates Maurice and Oscar Cooper; the Mohammed Group of Companies, owned by Mohammed Salame, who was Taylor’s ambassador-at-large in Cote d’Ivoire; and Maryland Wood Processing Industries, owned by a local Lebanese businessman, Abbas Fawaz.

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., ix, 90 Filadelfia, Paraguay, 133–34 Filer, Colin, 182–86 Finland, 47, 167, 168, 177 Firestone, 66, 69–73, 75, 77, 79, 84 Flora EcoPower, 248 Fonterra, 160, 203 food: export bans, 32, 103, 204; price of, vii, 5, 31–32, 37, 38, 75, 95, 101, 195, 238, 291, 297; 2008 price spike, 19–27, 34, 96, 293; security, 22, 34, 37, 96, 112, 280, 293–94, 296; self-sufficiency, 21, 29–30, 32, 277 Forest Peoples Programme, 229 Forest Stewardship Council, 173, 177 Formosa do Rio Preto, Brazil, 121–22, 124 Fortress conservation, 224, 228, 230 France and French, vii, 30, 103, 109, 193, 201, 217, 273, 274, 299; and timber trade, 67, 88, 263–65 Frayne, Michael, 81–82, 84, 87–88 Friends of the Earth, 176, 245 Friends of Yala Swamp, 62 Fulani, 272, 274–76, 281 Fundacion Tierra, 145 Gabon, 88, 229, 235, 263–65 Gaddafi, Colonel Muammar, 67, 109, 277 Gambella, Ethiopia, 3–16, 44, 47, 49, 239, 244, 288, 289 Garamba National Park, DRC, 226, 227 Georgia, 237 Germany and Germans, 24, 30, 58, 78, 83, 167, 213, 243, 259; German land grabbers, 160, 218, 264, 265; Germans in South America, 117, 131, 132, 134, 138 Getty family, 81–82, 84, 231 Gezira project, Sudan, 37 Ghana, 89, 249–50, 274, 288 Global Witness, 68 goats, 59, 159, 272, 277, 281, 284, 286, 296 Gold, Dan, 97 Golden Agri, 85, 88 Goldman Sachs, vii, 21, 24–25, 93, 97, 110, 111, 154, 158, 203, 237, 240; Goldman Sachs Commodity Index, 25 Gold Star Farms, 249 Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck), ix, 123 Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park, 227, 247 Green Advocates, 76 Greenleaf Global, 98 Greenpeace, 263 Green Resources, 48 green revolution, 22, 295, 296 Greenworld BVI, 98 Groundnut Scheme, Tanganyika, 103–4 Grumeti game reserve, Tanzania, 209–210, 259 Grzimek, Bernhard, 213, 230 Guarani, 145 Guatemala, 142–44 Guinea, vii, 21, 75, 76, 99 Guinea Bissau, 204 Guinea Savannah Zone, 9 Guyra Paraguay, 130, 136–37 Haes, Charles de, 223–25 Haiti, 22, 300 Hall, Ruth, 235, 237 Hands, Guy, 97, 158 Hanks, John, 227 Hardin, Garrett, 285 Hasan, Mohamad “Bob,” 172 Hassad Food, 36, 159 Hazim Hazim Chehade, 263 Heart of Darkness (Joseph Conrad), ix, 85, 264 hedge funds, vii, 24, 37, 73, 90, 96, 97, 100, 109, 110, 114, 210, 245 Heilberg, Philippe, 41–45 Herakles Farms, 89 Hickey, Liam, 74–75, 77 hippo grass.

The Outlaw Ocean: Journeys Across the Last Untamed Frontier by Ian Urbina

9 dash line, Airbnb, British Empire, clean water, Costa Concordia, crowdsourcing, disinformation, Exxon Valdez, failed state, Filipino sailors, forensic accounting, Garrett Hardin, gentrification, global value chain, Global Witness, illegal immigration, independent contractor, invisible hand, Jessica Bruder, John Markoff, Jones Act, Julian Assange, Malacca Straits, Maui Hawaii, Neal Stephenson, New Journalism, ocean acidification, offshore financial centre, Patri Friedman, pattern recognition, Peter Thiel, Silicon Valley, Skype, South China Sea, standardized shipping container, statistical arbitrage, Tragedy of the Commons, UNCLOS, UNCLOS, union organizing, Upton Sinclair, WikiLeaks, William Langewiesche

In April 2017, President: Executive order 13795 of April 28, 2017, Implementing an America-First Offshore Energy Strategy. It was not until 2016: Rodrigo L. Moura et al., “An Extensive Reef System at the Amazon River Mouth,” American Association for the Advancement of Science, April 22, 2016. Before I left the United States: The Guardian, in collaboration with Global Witness, maintains a useful list of murders of environmentalists. I also consulted Simeon Tegel, “Latin America Most Dangerous Place for Environmentalists,” Public Radio International, Sept. 2, 2013; Monica Ulmanu, Alan Evans, and Georgia Brown, “The Defenders,” Guardian; June 13, 2017; Michael E. Miller, “Why Are Brazil’s Environmentalists Being Murdered?

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,” Morning Mix (blog), Washington Post, Aug. 27, 2015; Oliver Holmes, “Environmental Activist Murders Set Record as 2015 Became Deadliest Year,” Guardian, June 20, 2016; Andrew O’Reilly, “Brazil Becomes Most Dangerous Country in World for Environmental Activists,” Fox News, June 20, 2016; Márcio Astrini, “Brazil: The Most Dangerous Country for Environmental Activists in 2015,” Greenpeace, June 27, 2016; “Olympics Host Brazil Is the Most Dangerous Country in the World for Environmental Activism,” Global Witness, Aug. 4, 2016. One environmentalist had his ears: Miller, “Why Are Brazil’s Environmentalists Being Murdered?” A nun who had been protesting: Myrna Domit, “Rancher to Be Charged in 2005 Killing of Nun in Amazon,” New York Times, Dec. 28, 2008. So, aside from destroying: My reading on the Amazon consisted of Isabel Allende, “Spirits of the Jungle,” Australian, April 19, 1997; Simon Barnes, “Good News from the Forest; Reportage,” Times, Oct. 18, 2007; David Quammen, “A Test of Endurance: A Scientist Studies Conservation and Destruction Deep in the Amazon,” San Francisco Chronicle, April 17, 1988; Alex Shoumatoff, “The Gasping Forest,” Vanity Fair, May 2007; Oliver Tickell, “In Peru’s Lush Rain Forest,” New York Times, June 11, 1989; Ken Wiwa, “Saints or Sinners?

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“The Changing Nature of High Seas Fishing: How Flags of Convenience Provide Cover for Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated Fishing.” Canberra: Australian Department of Agriculture, Fisheries, and Forestry, International Transport Workers Federation (ITF), and WWF International, 2005. Gilje, Paul. To Swear Like a Sailor: Maritime Culture in America, 1750–1850. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016. Global Witness/IFT. Taylor-Made: The Pivotal Role of Liberia’s Forests and Flag of Convenience in Regional Conflict. Sept. 2001. Golden, Frank, and Michael Tipton. Essentials of Sea Survival. Champaign, Ill.: Human Kinetics, 2002. Graham, Stuart. “Indonesian Fishermen Stranded in S. Africa After Horror Voyage.”

Why Europe Will Run the 21st Century by Mark Leonard

Berlin Wall, Celtic Tiger, continuous integration, cuban missile crisis, different worldview, European colonialism, facts on the ground, failed state, global reserve currency, Global Witness, invisible hand, knowledge economy, mass immigration, non-tariff barriers, North Sea oil, one-China policy, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, pension reform, reserve currency, Robert Gordon, shareholder value, South China Sea, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, trade liberalization, Washington Consensus

They see them as plastic ducks bobbing in the choppy seas of global capitalism and American hegemony, and blaming global events for their failure to deliver on their promises. Europe is seen as part of the problem, leaching away government power to institutions miles away in Brussels. But far from being part of the problem, the European Union is the remedy: giving countries control over policies that had become global. Witness the tale of two northern European countries. Norway and Ireland have a population of around 4 million. Both export salmon and both do most of their trade with the European Union. One is in the European Union, the other is not. While Norway has had to adopt 80 per cent of EU legislation in order to join the European Economic Area,7 it has had no say on its content, while Ireland has had a seat at the table from the beginning.

Extreme Economies: Survival, Failure, Future – Lessons From the World’s Limits by Richard Davies

Abraham Maslow, agricultural Revolution, air freight, Anton Chekhov, artificial general intelligence, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, big-box store, cashless society, clean water, complexity theory, deindustrialization, digital divide, eurozone crisis, failed state, financial innovation, Ford Model T, Garrett Hardin, gentleman farmer, Global Witness, government statistician, illegal immigration, income inequality, informal economy, it's over 9,000, James Hargreaves, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, joint-stock company, large denomination, Livingstone, I presume, Malacca Straits, mandatory minimum, manufacturing employment, means of production, megacity, meta-analysis, new economy, off grid, oil shale / tar sands, pension reform, profit motive, randomized controlled trial, rolling blackouts, school choice, school vouchers, Scramble for Africa, side project, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, Skype, spinning jenny, subscription business, The Chicago School, the payments system, trade route, Tragedy of the Commons, Travis Kalanick, uranium enrichment, urban planning, wealth creators, white picket fence, working-age population, Y Combinator, young professional

The Office des Routes and public infrastructure (roads) For the tribulations of the Office des Routes under Mobutu, see Young and Turner (1985); for a more recent analysis of the state of the Congo’s infrastructure, see Foster and Benitez (2011). On Kabila and post-Mobutu theft of state assets On the wealth of the Kabila family and its sources, see Congo Research Group (2017). Estimates of funds that have gone missing due to theft of mining revenues are available in Global Witness (2017); the role of coltan in the conflict in eastern Congo is HCSS (2013); for a critique of Kabila, and the similarity of his methods with those of Mobutu, see Bavier (2010). Catch-22 – getting stuck on ‘Article 15’ The perplexing strength of the weak state is discussed in Englebert (2003).

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., and Olsson, O. (2011), ‘Feeding the Horse: Unofficial Economic Activities Within the Police Force in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’, African Security, 4 (4), 223–41. Foster, V., and Benitez, D. (2011), The Democratic Republic of Congo’s Infrastructure: A Continental Perspective, Working Paper 5602 (Washington, DC: World Bank). Global Witness (2017), Regime Cash Machine, Report. Gottschalk, K. (2016), ‘Hydro-politics and Hydro-power: The Century-long Saga of the Inga Project’, Canadian Journal of African Studies/Revue canadienne des études africaines, 50 (2), 279–94. Haskin, J. M. (2005), The Tragic State of the Congo: From Decolonization to Dictatorship (Algora).

Tracers in the Dark: The Global Hunt for the Crime Lords of Cryptocurrency by Andy Greenberg

2021 United States Capitol attack, Airbnb, augmented reality, bitcoin, Bitcoin Ponzi scheme, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, Brian Krebs, Cody Wilson, commoditize, computerized markets, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, forensic accounting, Global Witness, Google Glasses, Higgs boson, hive mind, impulse control, index card, Internet Archive, Jeff Bezos, Julian Assange, Large Hadron Collider, machine readable, market design, operational security, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, pirate software, Ponzi scheme, ransomware, reserve currency, ride hailing / ride sharing, rolodex, Ross Ulbricht, Satoshi Nakamoto, Skype, slashdot, Social Justice Warrior, the market place, web application, WikiLeaks

GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT Those CSAM sites accounted for: Andy Greenberg, “Over 80 Percent of Dark-Web Visits Relate to Pedophilia, Study Finds,” Wired, Dec. 30, 2014, wired.com. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT The better part of a decade: Global Witness, “ ‘Do You Know Alexander Vinnik?,’ ” Global Witness, Nov. 18, 2019, globalwitness.org. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT Agents determined that Vinnik: Avaton Luxury Hotel & Villas website, avaton.com. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT Alexander Vinnik suddenly found himself: Andrei Zakharov, “Hunting the Missing Millions from Collapsed Cryptocurrency,” BBC News, Dec. 30, 2019.

Dancing in the Glory of Monsters: The Collapse of the Congo and the Great War of Africa by Jason Stearns

Berlin Wall, business climate, clean water, colonial rule, disinformation, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Global Witness, Great Leap Forward, land tenure, Mahatma Gandhi, means of production, microcredit, Nelson Mandela, technology bubble, transfer pricing, unemployed young men, working-age population, éminence grise

There are, unfortunately, almost no legal safeguards in the Congo to prevent such transfer pricing. 35 Author’s interview with Dona Kampata, Kinshasa, July 2009. 36 Prunier, Africa’s World War, 239. 37 His name has been changed to protect his identity. 38 This section is based on several interviews with the pilot in the Eastern Congo, March 2008. 39 The UN panel of experts that was researching the illegal exploitation of natural resources in the Congo at the time was given similar information regarding how long it took to fly the stockpiles to Kigali. 40 According to Global Witness, a kilo of tin was being sold for $6 in Goma in 1998, when the world coltan price was hovering around $60 per kilo of refined tantalum. Coltan sold in Goma usually included around 20 to 40 percent tantalum. See Didier de Failly, “Coltan: Pour comprendre ...,” in L’Afrique des Grands Lacs: Annuaire 2000–2001 (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2001), 13, and “ Under-Mining Peace,” Global Witness (June 2005): 28. 41 Report of the United Nations Panel, 8. 42 Gauthiers de Villers with Jean Omasombo and Erik Kennes, Republique democratique du Congo: Guerre et politique: Les trente derniers mois de L.

The Finance Curse: How Global Finance Is Making Us All Poorer by Nicholas Shaxson

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Airbnb, airline deregulation, Alan Greenspan, anti-communist, bank run, banking crisis, Basel III, Bear Stearns, benefit corporation, Bernie Madoff, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Blythe Masters, Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business climate, business cycle, capital controls, carried interest, Cass Sunstein, Celtic Tiger, central bank independence, centre right, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, corporate governance, corporate raider, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, cross-subsidies, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, demographic dividend, Deng Xiaoping, desegregation, Donald Trump, Etonian, export processing zone, failed state, fake news, falling living standards, family office, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, forensic accounting, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, gig economy, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, global supply chain, Global Witness, high net worth, Ida Tarbell, income inequality, index fund, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, junk bonds, Kickstarter, land value tax, late capitalism, light touch regulation, London Whale, Long Term Capital Management, low skilled workers, manufacturing employment, Mark Zuckerberg, Martin Wolf, megaproject, Michael Milken, Money creation, Mont Pelerin Society, moral hazard, neoliberal agenda, Network effects, new economy, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, old-boy network, out of africa, Paul Samuelson, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, price mechanism, proprietary trading, purchasing power parity, pushing on a string, race to the bottom, regulatory arbitrage, rent-seeking, road to serfdom, Robert Bork, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, seminal paper, shareholder value, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart grid, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, South Sea Bubble, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, stock buybacks, Suez crisis 1956, The Chicago School, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, Tragedy of the Commons, transfer pricing, two and twenty, vertical integration, Wayback Machine, wealth creators, white picket fence, women in the workforce, zero-sum game

Variation within this wealthy group suggests that the top one-tenth of 1 per cent of wealthholders (people with $40 million or more in net worth) may tend to hold still more conservative views that are even more distinct from those of the general public.’ 19. From my interview with Gaydamak in Moscow in 2005. In addition, the London-based NGO Global Witness reported in 2002 that Gaydamak ‘may have even visited the UK, possibly even as recently as late November 2001’ despite the international arrest warrant being issued by France on 6 December 2000. Gaydamak held an open press interview at the Dorchester Hotel in London two days afterwards – with no action from British authorities. See Global Witness, All the President’s Men, 1 March 2002. 20. Michel Pinçon and Monique Pinçon-Charlot, Grandes Fortunes: dynasties familiales et formes de richesses en France, Payot, October 2006, pp.14–16 21.

Dirty Secrets How Tax Havens Destroy the Economy by Richard Murphy

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", banking crisis, barriers to entry, Bernie Sanders, centre right, corporate governance, Donald Trump, Double Irish / Dutch Sandwich, en.wikipedia.org, Glass-Steagall Act, Global Witness, high net worth, income inequality, intangible asset, Leo Hollis, light touch regulation, moral hazard, Occupy movement, offshore financial centre, race to the bottom, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, Suez canal 1869, Suez crisis 1956, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, transfer pricing, Washington Consensus

Williamson, ‘The Washington Consensus as Policy Prescription for Development’, Institute for International Economics, 2004, pdf at piie.com. 11.Andrew Baker, ‘The Lough Erne Summit and the Tax Justice Story’, Political Studies Association, 24 June 2013, at psa.ac.uk. 12.Jamie Doward and Daniel Boffey, ‘David Cameron Under Pressure to End Tax Haven Secrecy’, Guardian, 7 May 2016; Patrick Wintour, ‘Overseas Territories Spared from Any UK Law on Company Registers’, Guardian, 12 April 2016. 13.Global Witness, ‘How the UK Government Has the Power to Make Its Tax Havens Stop Enabling Crime and Corruption’, press release, 5 April 2016, at globalwitness.org. 14.For an explanation, see Tax Justice Network, ‘Tax Justice Briefing with Policy Recommendations: European Union Savings Tax Directive’, March 2008, pdf at taxjustice.net. 3What Is a Tax Haven?

Every Nation for Itself: Winners and Losers in a G-Zero World by Ian Bremmer

airport security, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, blood diamond, Bretton Woods, BRICs, capital controls, clean water, creative destruction, Deng Xiaoping, Doha Development Round, energy security, European colonialism, failed state, global rebalancing, global supply chain, Global Witness, income inequality, informal economy, information security, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Julian Assange, Kickstarter, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, mutually assured destruction, Nelson Mandela, Nixon shock, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, no-fly zone, nuclear winter, Parag Khanna, purchasing power parity, reserve currency, Ronald Reagan, smart grid, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, Stuxnet, trade route, uranium enrichment, Washington Consensus, WikiLeaks, Yom Kippur War

Norihiko Shirouzu, “Train Makers Rail Against China’s High-Speed Designs,” Wall Street Journal, November 17, 2010, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704814204575507353221141616.html. 19. China Water Risk, http://chinawaterrisk.org/. 20. Michael Wines, “China Takes a Loss to Get Ahead in the Business of Fresh Water,” New York Times, October 25, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/26/world/asia/china-takes-loss-to-get-ahead-in-desalination-industry.htm?_r=1. 21. Global Witness, “The Kimberley Process,” http://www.globalwitness.org/campaigns/conflict/conflict-diamonds/kimberley-process. 22. Alex Perry, “Why Zimbabwe’s New Diamonds Imperil Global Trade,” Time, December 5, 2010, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2029482,00.html. 23. Godfrey Marawanyika, “Kimberley Grants Zimbabwe Conditional Diamond Sale,” Agence France-Presse, June 23, 2011, http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jgK132xOZpcGmXNkGy4ljAkcaXvQ?

How to Run the World: Charting a Course to the Next Renaissance by Parag Khanna

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Albert Einstein, Asian financial crisis, back-to-the-land, bank run, blood diamond, Bob Geldof, borderless world, BRICs, British Empire, call centre, carbon footprint, carbon tax, charter city, clean tech, clean water, cloud computing, commoditize, congestion pricing, continuation of politics by other means, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, Deng Xiaoping, Doha Development Round, don't be evil, double entry bookkeeping, energy security, European colonialism, export processing zone, facts on the ground, failed state, financial engineering, friendly fire, global village, Global Witness, Google Earth, high net worth, high-speed rail, index fund, informal economy, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, Kickstarter, Kiva Systems, laissez-faire capitalism, Live Aid, Masdar, mass immigration, megacity, Michael Shellenberger, microcredit, military-industrial complex, mutually assured destruction, Naomi Klein, Nelson Mandela, New Urbanism, no-fly zone, off grid, offshore financial centre, oil shock, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), open economy, out of africa, Parag Khanna, private military company, Productivity paradox, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, reserve currency, Salesforce, Silicon Valley, smart grid, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, sustainable-tourism, Ted Nordhaus, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, The Wisdom of Crowds, too big to fail, trade liberalization, trickle-down economics, UNCLOS, uranium enrichment, Washington Consensus, X Prize

Alien Tort Claims Act, the International Labor Rights Fund sued Unocal in the 1990s on behalf of impoverished Burmese villagers for abuses committed by the ruling junta during the construction of the $1.2 billion Yadana pipeline, where villagers were paid little or nothing, and shot if they moved too slowly. While legal tactics have evoked reflex benevolence from companies, NGOs also actively lobby the same corporations to reshape their policies on the ground prior to getting sued. Rather than continuously publishing damning reports on blood diamonds, Global Witness decided to sit down with De Beers to forge what became known as the Kimberly Process for monitoring and certifying the origin of diamonds being sold worldwide. Now more than one hundred diamond companies, monitoring groups, and regional organizations are involved. The worldwide governance of natural-resource wealth is now emerging through such public-private networks.

The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It by Paul Collier

air freight, Asian financial crisis, blood diamond, Bob Geldof, British Empire, business cycle, Doha Development Round, export processing zone, failed state, falling living standards, Global Witness, income inequality, mass immigration, out of africa, rent-seeking, Ronald Reagan, structural adjustment programs, trade liberalization, zero-sum game

The UN defines them as “diamonds that originate from areas controlled by forces or factions opposed to legitimate and internationally recognized governments, and are used to fund military action in opposition to those governments.” In the case of conflict diamonds, the attention that has been drawn to the problem by the NGO Global Witness has paid off. After years of denying that there was a problem, De Beers, the world’s largest diamond producer, has made amazing changes that have gone a long way toward addressing the problem and have turned the company into a corporate role model. So low income, slow growth, and primary commodity dependence make a country prone to civil war, but are they the real causes of civil war?

China's Great Wall of Debt: Shadow Banks, Ghost Cities, Massive Loans, and the End of the Chinese Miracle by Dinny McMahon

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, Andrei Shleifer, Asian financial crisis, bank run, business cycle, California gold rush, capital controls, crony capitalism, dark matter, Deng Xiaoping, Donald Trump, Edward Glaeser, eurozone crisis, financial innovation, fixed income, Gini coefficient, Global Witness, Great Leap Forward, high-speed rail, if you build it, they will come, income inequality, industrial robot, invisible hand, low interest rates, megacity, middle-income trap, military-industrial complex, money market fund, mortgage debt, new economy, peer-to-peer lending, Ponzi scheme, Ronald Reagan, short selling, Silicon Valley, subprime mortgage crisis, too big to fail, trickle-down economics, urban planning, working-age population, zero-sum game

m=content&c=index&a=show&catid=99&id=106. was actually fake: Elin McCoy, “Is Now the Time to Buy a Case of Château Lafite?,” Bloomberg LP, August 10, 2015, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-08-10/is-now-the-time-to-buy-a-case-of-chateau-lafite-. China’s southern neighbor: “Jade: Myanmar’s Big State Secret,” Global Witness, October 23, 2015, https://www.globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/oil-gas-and-mining/myanmarjade/. more expensive than gold: Dinny McMahon, “Forget Stocks—Chinese Turn Bullish on Booze and Caterpillar Fungus,” Wall Street Journal, January 30, 2012, http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052970203471004577142594203471950.

Grave New World: The End of Globalization, the Return of History by Stephen D. King

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 9 dash line, Admiral Zheng, air freight, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, Asian financial crisis, bank run, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, bilateral investment treaty, bitcoin, blockchain, Bonfire of the Vanities, borderless world, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, British Empire, business cycle, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, central bank independence, collateralized debt obligation, colonial rule, corporate governance, credit crunch, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency peg, currency risk, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, debt deflation, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, Doha Development Round, Donald Trump, Edward Snowden, eurozone crisis, facts on the ground, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, falling living standards, floating exchange rates, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, George Akerlof, global supply chain, global value chain, Global Witness, Great Leap Forward, hydraulic fracturing, Hyman Minsky, imperial preference, income inequality, income per capita, incomplete markets, inflation targeting, information asymmetry, Internet of things, invisible hand, Jeremy Corbyn, joint-stock company, Kickstarter, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, middle-income trap, moral hazard, Nixon shock, offshore financial centre, oil shock, old age dependency ratio, paradox of thrift, Peace of Westphalia, plutocrats, post-truth, price stability, profit maximization, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, rent-seeking, reserve currency, reshoring, rising living standards, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, Scramble for Africa, Second Machine Age, Skype, South China Sea, special drawing rights, technology bubble, The Great Moderation, The Market for Lemons, the market place, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, trade liberalization, trade route, Washington Consensus, WikiLeaks, Yom Kippur War, zero-sum game

Larger and more efficient aeroplanes able to travel vast distances led not only to a dramatic increase in the number of holidaymakers prepared to travel to far-flung places, but also allowed produce from all over the world to appear on our plates, whatever the season. Yet without the information technology revolution, it is difficult to imagine that the world would have experienced anything like the degree of globalization witnessed since the 1980s. At a stroke, the nineteenth-century coordination problem – which led to a concentration of industrial activities in a limited number of areas – was removed. Global supply chains took over. Apple could design its iPhone in California, yet make it in China, courtesy of FoxConn.

Nomad Century: How Climate Migration Will Reshape Our World by Gaia Vince

3D printing, An Inconvenient Truth, Anthropocene, biodiversity loss, bitcoin, Boris Johnson, carbon tax, charter city, circular economy, clean water, colonial exploitation, coronavirus, COVID-19, decarbonisation, degrowth, Donald Trump, Dunbar number, European colonialism, failed state, gentrification, global pandemic, Global Witness, green new deal, Haber-Bosch Process, high-speed rail, housing crisis, ice-free Arctic, illegal immigration, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of agriculture, invention of the printing press, job automation, joint-stock company, Kim Stanley Robinson, labour mobility, load shedding, lockdown, low skilled workers, Mahatma Gandhi, Malacca Straits, mass immigration, mass incarceration, mega-rich, megacity, negative emissions, new economy, ocean acidification, old age dependency ratio, open borders, Patri Friedman, Peace of Westphalia, Pearl River Delta, Peter Thiel, place-making, planetary scale, plyscraper, polynesian navigation, quantitative easing, randomized controlled trial, rewilding, Rishi Sunak, sharing economy, Shenzhen special economic zone , Silicon Valley, special economic zone, trade route, transatlantic slave trade, undersea cable, urban planning, urban sprawl, white flight, women in the workforce, working-age population, zero-sum game, Zipcar

Smoke killed ten times more people than flames. Australia is a country of migrants and its population is growing, but will people still choose to live in a country where a quarter to half of the year is spent battling intolerable heat and smoke? The effect of the fires on native wildlife was horrific, and heartbreaking pictures bore global witness to kangaroos and birds attempting to escape, while tree-bound koalas shrieked as they succumbed to the flames. Nearly 3 billion wild animals were wiped out, making it one of the worst ecological disasters in modern history. The enormity of the devastation is so great that Australian scientists describe it as an omnicide, the killing of everything.

Zero-Sum Future: American Power in an Age of Anxiety by Gideon Rachman

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, Asian financial crisis, bank run, battle of ideas, Berlin Wall, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Bonfire of the Vanities, borderless world, Bretton Woods, BRICs, capital controls, carbon tax, centre right, clean water, collapse of Lehman Brothers, colonial rule, currency manipulation / currency intervention, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, Doha Development Round, energy security, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, global reserve currency, Global Witness, Golden arches theory, Great Leap Forward, greed is good, Greenspan put, Hernando de Soto, illegal immigration, income inequality, invisible hand, It's morning again in America, Jeff Bezos, laissez-faire capitalism, Live Aid, low interest rates, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, Mikhail Gorbachev, moral hazard, mutually assured destruction, Naomi Klein, Nelson Mandela, offshore financial centre, Oklahoma City bombing, open borders, open economy, Peace of Westphalia, peak oil, pension reform, plutocrats, popular capitalism, price stability, RAND corporation, reserve currency, rising living standards, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, shareholder value, Sinatra Doctrine, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, Tax Reform Act of 1986, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, The Myth of the Rational Market, Thomas Malthus, Timothy McVeigh, trickle-down economics, Washington Consensus, Winter of Discontent, zero-sum game

A WORLD OF TROUBLES 1. Barack Obama, “Responsibility for Our Common Future,” address to the United Nations General Assembly, September 23, 2009. 2. AIG turned out to be regulated by the state of New York. 3. Geoff Dyer, “China sets carbon target for 2020,” Financial Times, November 26, 2009. 4. Quoted in Global Witness, “Heads in the Sand: Governments Ignore the Oil Supply Crunch and Threaten the Climate,” October 2009, 6. Available from www.globalwitness.org/media_library_get…/ heads_in_the_sand_web.pdf. 5. Ibid., 21. 6. Bill Emmott, “China’s accidental empire is a growing danger,” Times, London, May 22, 2009. 7.

Confessions of a Microfinance Heretic by Hugh Sinclair

"World Economic Forum" Davos, accounting loophole / creative accounting, Bernie Madoff, colonial exploitation, en.wikipedia.org, end world poverty, financial innovation, financial intermediation, Gini coefficient, Global Witness, high net worth, illegal immigration, impact investing, inventory management, low interest rates, microcredit, Northern Rock, peer-to-peer lending, pirate software, Ponzi scheme, principal–agent problem, profit motive, Vision Fund

As a close friend of the Indian activist Vandana Shiva and the late Teddy Goldsmith, he certainly had the skills required to unmask the microfinance sector, and he had worked in a bewildering array of countries. He had served on missions with George Soros’s Open Society in Burma and the United Nations in East Timor, and he collaborated with Global Witness in resource-rich countries in Africa and Central Asia sniffing out corruption. He had written an amazing book about Iran and made a documentary in Congo-Brazzaville.15 He was the perfect guy to work with. I was already out of my depth, this being my first-ever activist endeavor, and I needed all the help I could get.

Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle for Internet Freedom by Rebecca MacKinnon

A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Bay Area Rapid Transit, Berlin Wall, blood diamond, business cycle, business intelligence, Cass Sunstein, Chelsea Manning, citizen journalism, Citizen Lab, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, collective bargaining, conceptual framework, corporate social responsibility, Deng Xiaoping, digital divide, digital Maoism, don't be evil, Eben Moglen, Evgeny Morozov, Filter Bubble, Firefox, future of journalism, Global Witness, high-speed rail, illegal immigration, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, John Markoff, John Perry Barlow, Joi Ito, Julian Assange, Mark Zuckerberg, Mikhail Gorbachev, MITM: man-in-the-middle, national security letter, online collectivism, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, Parag Khanna, pre–internet, race to the bottom, real-name policy, Richard Stallman, Ronald Reagan, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, Steve Crocker, Steven Levy, Tactical Technology Collective, technological determinism, WikiLeaks, Yochai Benkler

Newer organizations like the World Economic Forum, along with so-called multi-stakeholder corporate responsibility initiatives, create spaces where states, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and corporations can meet if not as equals, then at least as joint actors based on the premise that solutions to global challenges are beyond the legitimacy and capacity of any one sector to succeed. It is now normal for the world’s most powerful governments to consult with multinational corporations to shape a range of financial, trade, and foreign policy objectives. Not only are the world’s most powerful democracies prodded and shamed by international NGOs like Human Rights Watch, Global Witness, Oxfam, and Greenpeace, but governments also increasingly find themselves needing to coordinate with—and even answer to—these and many other organizations in addressing a range of human rights and developmental issues. Companies and NGOs now show up in force to lobby their interests and causes at UN meetings on problems ranging from climate change to the new and thorny question of Internet governance.

The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and Its Solutions by Jason Hickel

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, Andrei Shleifer, Asian financial crisis, Atahualpa, Bartolomé de las Casas, Bernie Sanders, Bob Geldof, Bretton Woods, British Empire, Cape to Cairo, capital controls, carbon credits, carbon footprint, carbon tax, clean water, collective bargaining, colonial rule, Cornelius Vanderbilt, David Attenborough, David Graeber, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, declining real wages, degrowth, dematerialisation, Doha Development Round, Elon Musk, European colonialism, falling living standards, financial deregulation, flying shuttle, Fractional reserve banking, Francisco Pizarro, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, Global Witness, Hans Rosling, happiness index / gross national happiness, Howard Zinn, income inequality, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), investor state dispute settlement, James Watt: steam engine, laissez-faire capitalism, land reform, land value tax, liberal capitalism, Live Aid, Mahatma Gandhi, Money creation, Monroe Doctrine, Mont Pelerin Society, moral hazard, Naomi Klein, negative emissions, Nelson Mandela, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, out of africa, Phillips curve, planned obsolescence, plutocrats, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, rent control, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, Scramble for Africa, shareholder value, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, structural adjustment programs, TED Talk, The Chicago School, The Spirit Level, trade route, transatlantic slave trade, transfer pricing, trickle-down economics, Washington Consensus, WikiLeaks, women in the workforce, Works Progress Administration

Also see Frederick Kaufman, ‘The food bubble’, Harpers, July 2010. 28 ‘World food prices continued to …’ This according to the FAO’s world food price index graph. 29 ‘According to UN sources …’ Olivier De Schutter, cited in Pearce, The Land Grabbers, p. 24. 30 ‘A land purchase qualifies as …’ This is the definition used by the Land Matrix (www.landmatrix.org). 31 ‘Early estimates from the World Bank …’ Pearce, The Land Grabbers, p. ix. On transparency issues, see Josie Cohen, ‘What’s in a number? Why the struggle to quantify the global land grabbing crisis is part of the problem’, Global Witness, blog post, 11 March 2014, https://www.globalwitness.org/en-gb/blog/whats-number-why-struggle-quantify-truncated/. 32 ‘While the majority of the land-grabbers …’ ‘Land grabs: the facts’, New Internationalist, May 2013, p. 17. 33 ‘Number of land grabs since 2000’ Map generated by the Land Matrix (www.landmatrix.org).

Philanthrocapitalism by Matthew Bishop, Michael Green, Bill Clinton

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, Abraham Maslow, Albert Einstein, An Inconvenient Truth, anti-communist, AOL-Time Warner, barriers to entry, battle of ideas, Bernie Madoff, Big Tech, Bob Geldof, Bonfire of the Vanities, business process, business process outsourcing, Charles Lindbergh, clean tech, clean water, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, Dava Sobel, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, digital divide, do well by doing good, don't be evil, family office, financial innovation, full employment, global pandemic, global village, Global Witness, God and Mammon, Hernando de Soto, high net worth, Ida Tarbell, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, James Dyson, John Elkington, John Harrison: Longitude, joint-stock company, junk bonds, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, Larry Ellison, Live Aid, lone genius, Marc Andreessen, Marc Benioff, market bubble, mass affluent, Michael Milken, microcredit, Mikhail Gorbachev, Neil Armstrong, Nelson Mandela, new economy, offshore financial centre, old-boy network, PalmPilot, peer-to-peer lending, performance metric, Peter Singer: altruism, plutocrats, profit maximization, profit motive, Richard Feynman, risk tolerance, risk-adjusted returns, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, scientific management, seminal paper, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Slavoj Žižek, South Sea Bubble, sovereign wealth fund, SpaceShipOne, stem cell, Steve Jobs, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, trade liberalization, transaction costs, trickle-down economics, Tyler Cowen, wealth creators, winner-take-all economy, working poor, World Values Survey, X Prize

How long before Russia’s “silent oligarchs” rediscover the courage to engage in the sort of politically sensitive philanthropy that can tackle the big issues facing their country? One of his most significant achievements has been focused on corporations rather than governments—or, rather, on reducing the corruption of governments by corporations. He funded the Publish What You Pay campaign, supported by several NGOs including Global Witness, to persuade oil and mining companies to disclose all the payments they make to the governments of the countries where they operate. The aim was to generate leverage by enabling the citizens of those countries to hold their governments accountable for where the money goes. But since companies listed on major stock exchanges could not be compelled to publish country-by-country accounts, Soros switched the campaign’s attention from companies to governments.

Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet by Jeffrey Sachs

agricultural Revolution, air freight, Anthropocene, back-to-the-land, biodiversity loss, British Empire, business process, carbon credits, carbon footprint, carbon tax, clean water, colonial rule, corporate social responsibility, correlation does not imply causation, creative destruction, demographic transition, Diane Coyle, digital divide, Edward Glaeser, energy security, failed state, Garrett Hardin, Gini coefficient, global pandemic, Global Witness, Haber-Bosch Process, impact investing, income inequality, income per capita, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), intermodal, invention of agriculture, invention of the steam engine, invisible hand, Joseph Schumpeter, knowledge worker, labor-force participation, low skilled workers, mass immigration, microcredit, ocean acidification, oil shale / tar sands, old age dependency ratio, peak oil, profit maximization, profit motive, purchasing power parity, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, Simon Kuznets, Skype, statistical model, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, trade route, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, unemployed young men, War on Poverty, women in the workforce, working-age population, zoonotic diseases

Of course, this is only true if these companies abide by internationally recognized labor standards and human rights principles related to community rights, workers’ health, and so on. Thanks to relentless and dedicated pressure by NGOs, the major companies, intent on burnishing their names, are working toward or fulfilling those standards in many important cases. Many NGOs—such as Global Witness, Oxfam, the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, Amnesty International, and CERES—are performing a vital and heroic service in exposing companies that continue to abuse the privilege of their position and power. Yet there needs to be a situation of long-term trust and mutual accountability.

Making Globalization Work by Joseph E. Stiglitz

"World Economic Forum" Davos, affirmative action, Alan Greenspan, Andrei Shleifer, Asian financial crisis, banking crisis, barriers to entry, benefit corporation, Berlin Wall, blood diamond, business process, capital controls, carbon tax, central bank independence, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, currency manipulation / currency intervention, Doha Development Round, Exxon Valdez, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Firefox, full employment, Garrett Hardin, Gini coefficient, global reserve currency, Global Witness, Great Leap Forward, Gunnar Myrdal, happiness index / gross national happiness, illegal immigration, income inequality, income per capita, incomplete markets, Indoor air pollution, informal economy, information asymmetry, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), inventory management, invisible hand, John Markoff, Jones Act, Kenneth Arrow, Kenneth Rogoff, low interest rates, low skilled workers, manufacturing employment, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, microcredit, moral hazard, negative emissions, new economy, North Sea oil, offshore financial centre, oil rush, open borders, open economy, price stability, profit maximization, purchasing power parity, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, race to the bottom, reserve currency, rising living standards, risk tolerance, Seymour Hersh, Silicon Valley, special drawing rights, statistical model, the market place, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas L Friedman, trade liberalization, Tragedy of the Commons, trickle-down economics, union organizing, Washington Consensus, zero-sum game

Certification On July 5, 2000, the United Nations Security Council imposed a ban on the import (direct or indirect) of rough diamonds from Sierra Leone not accompanied by a certificate of origin from the Sierra Leone government. Uncertified Sierra Leone diamonds are now known as “conflict diamonds” this public recognition of the role of resources in financing a conflict, and the acknowledgment that it must be curtailed, is a move in the right direction. Amnesty International, Partnership Africa Canada, and Global Witness, along with other NGOs, are spearheading the effort to enforce the ban.23 A similar certification system should be established for tropical hardwood. Here, the problem is not so much the financing of conflict (though sometimes illegal logging does that too) but rather that illegal logging leads to rapid deforestation—with little benefit to the country.24 What the Papua New Guineans receive for their lumber is typically under 5 percent of its value once it reaches the developed world.

Londongrad: From Russia With Cash; The Inside Story of the Oligarchs by Mark Hollingsworth, Stewart Lansley

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Berlin Wall, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Bob Geldof, Bullingdon Club, business intelligence, company town, Cornelius Vanderbilt, corporate governance, corporate raider, credit crunch, crony capitalism, Donald Trump, energy security, Etonian, F. W. de Klerk, Global Witness, income inequality, kremlinology, Larry Ellison, Londongrad, mass immigration, mega-rich, Mikhail Gorbachev, offshore financial centre, paper trading, plutocrats, Plutonomy: Buying Luxury, Explaining Global Imbalances, power law, rent-seeking, Ronald Reagan, Skype, Sloane Ranger

In Moscow few journalists are as well informed as Will Stewart, and we are also grateful to officials from the Russian General Prosecutor’s Office, as well as Vincent Petrillo, a British businessman who knows more than most about the oil and gas sector in Russia. We also appreciate the expert guidance of Alex Yearsley, former head of Special Projects at Global Witness, the influential non-governmental organization. He gave us access to his formidable international network of contacts, which enriched every aspect of this book. He seems to know everyone in this murky world. And this book could not have been written without our researcher, Tom Mills, who proved to be tireless, resourceful, diligent, and skilful.

Dictatorland: The Men Who Stole Africa by Paul Kenyon

agricultural Revolution, anti-communist, Ascot racecourse, Boeing 747, British Empire, centre right, clean water, colonial rule, Etonian, European colonialism, falling living standards, friendly fire, Global Witness, land reform, mandatory minimum, Nelson Mandela, Norman Mailer, offshore financial centre, oil rush, oil shale / tar sands, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, Scramble for Africa, transatlantic slave trade, Yom Kippur War

For much inside information on the early years of the Libyan revolution, I am indebted to David Orser, formerly of Mobil and then Occidental, who had a ringside seat on some of the biggest deals of the early Gaddafi era. I am also grateful to my fixer, Mohammed Miloud, who carried out a series of interviews on my behalf with his Uncle Atti in Tripoli, a rare survivor of the Abu Salim prison massacre who went through much psychological discomfort to relive those terrible experiences. Nigeria. Barnaby Pace at Global Witness gave me indispensible assistance on the story of Dan Etete and his corrupt attempts to seize ownership of Nigeria’s largest oil concession. The distinguished silk Mark Howard QC of Brick Court Chambers gave me an entertaining account of questioning Dan Etete at London’s High Court. Equatorial Guinea.

Data Wrangling With Python: Tips and Tools to Make Your Life Easier by Jacqueline Kazil

Amazon Web Services, bash_history, business logic, cloud computing, correlation coefficient, crowdsourcing, data acquisition, data science, database schema, Debian, en.wikipedia.org, Fairphone, Firefox, Global Witness, Google Chrome, Hacker News, job automation, machine readable, Nate Silver, natural language processing, pull request, Ronald Reagan, Ruby on Rails, selection bias, social web, statistical model, web application, WikiLeaks

. • A study of income gaps by The Washington Post used tax and census data to con‐ clude the “ol’ boy network” was still alive in terms of job acquisition and initial salaries, but usually flattened or showed no correlation after those initial jobs were acquired. • We’ve studied some of the impacts of groups in Africa who use child labor, including for mining conflict minerals. A recent report by Amnesty International and Global Witness found most American firms are not adequately checking their supply pipelines to ensure their products do not use conflict minerals. There are millions of untold stories in the world. If you have a passion or a belief, it’s likely your insights and data wrangling skills can help people and communities.

Cities Under Siege: The New Military Urbanism by Stephen Graham

"hyperreality Baudrillard"~20 OR "Baudrillard hyperreality", addicted to oil, airport security, Alan Greenspan, Anthropocene, anti-communist, autonomous vehicles, Berlin Wall, call centre, carbon footprint, clean tech, clean water, congestion charging, creative destruction, credit crunch, DARPA: Urban Challenge, defense in depth, deindustrialization, digital map, disinformation, Dr. Strangelove, driverless car, edge city, energy security, European colonialism, export processing zone, failed state, Food sovereignty, gentrification, Gini coefficient, global supply chain, Global Witness, Google Earth, illegal immigration, income inequality, knowledge economy, late capitalism, Lewis Mumford, loose coupling, machine readable, market fundamentalism, mass incarceration, McMansion, megacity, military-industrial complex, moral panic, mutually assured destruction, Naomi Klein, New Urbanism, offshore financial centre, one-state solution, pattern recognition, peak oil, planetary scale, post-Fordism, private military company, Project for a New American Century, RAND corporation, RFID, Richard Florida, Scramble for Africa, Seymour Hersh, Silicon Valley, SimCity, smart transportation, surplus humans, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, urban decay, urban planning, urban renewal, urban sprawl, Washington Consensus, white flight, white picket fence

‘Reverse engineering needs to be added to the tactics of pirating, pranks, collage, culture jamming, and copyleft’, writes Patricia Zimmerman, ‘as strategies for resistance and intervention into transnational capital and empire’.41 Here we encounter ideas of ‘full spectrum resistance’, designed to reappropriate militarized media and control technologies as a way to counter military ideas of ‘full spectrum dominance’ through the very same technologies.42 The most well known examples include the reverse engineering of militarized video games.43 More startlingly, however, Chris Csikszentmihalyi of MIT has built a reverse-engineered unmanned roaming vehicle–Afghan Explorer–to be deployed to the killing zones of the War on Terror to act as global witness and to overcome restrictions on the press. This vehicle is an ‘autonomous robot for remote cruising and imaging of rural and urban geopolitical hotspots to gather news for the public in the face of Pentagon press controls of war zones’.44 In Austria, meanwhile, the System-77 Civil Counter-Reconnaissance group, led by artist Marko Peljhan, has reverse-engineered military surveillance drones and built their own drone system using a vehicle bought off the Internet (Figure 10.11).45 Its task, they say, is a form of countersurveillance46 – it will work as a ‘tactical urban countersurveillance system [to] monitor public space’.

Oil: Money, Politics, and Power in the 21st Century by Tom Bower

"World Economic Forum" Davos, addicted to oil, Alan Greenspan, An Inconvenient Truth, Ayatollah Khomeini, banking crisis, bonus culture, California energy crisis, corporate governance, credit crunch, energy security, Exxon Valdez, falling living standards, fear of failure, financial engineering, forensic accounting, Global Witness, index fund, interest rate swap, John Deuss, Korean Air Lines Flight 007, kremlinology, land bank, LNG terminal, Long Term Capital Management, margin call, megaproject, Meghnad Desai, Mikhail Gorbachev, millennium bug, MITM: man-in-the-middle, Nelson Mandela, new economy, North Sea oil, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, Oscar Wyatt, passive investing, peak oil, Piper Alpha, price mechanism, price stability, Ronald Reagan, shareholder value, short selling, Silicon Valley, sovereign wealth fund, transaction costs, transfer pricing, zero-sum game, éminence grise

Instead, the senior directors, while adhering to their wholesome scripture, acknowledged the need to adopt Gulf’s methods in the Third World. In West Africa, Chevron was suspected of collaborating with Shell to bribe James Ibori, the governor of the Nigerian Delta state. Both corporations had hired houseboats from the governor, and in return deposited $2.3 million into the account of MER Engineering at Barclays bank in London. Global Witness, an organization dedicated to exposing corruption, accused Chevron of paying “signature bonuses” to politicians in return for securing leases to offshore oilfields. In 2002, at the end of the 27-year civil war in Angola that had cost half a million lives, Chevron, in partnership with ExxonMobil, developed four blocks, each producing around 100,000 barrels a day, and in 2007 it would sign a $5 billion natural gas deal, leading a partnership with Total, BP and ENI.

The Climate Book: The Facts and the Solutions by Greta Thunberg

"World Economic Forum" Davos, accounting loophole / creative accounting, air freight, Alfred Russel Wallace, Anthropocene, basic income, Bernie Sanders, biodiversity loss, BIPOC, bitcoin, British Empire, car-free, carbon credits, carbon footprint, carbon tax, circular economy, clean water, cognitive dissonance, coronavirus, COVID-19, David Attenborough, decarbonisation, degrowth, disinformation, energy transition, Extinction Rebellion, Food sovereignty, global pandemic, global supply chain, Global Witness, green new deal, green transition, Greta Thunberg, housing crisis, Indoor air pollution, informal economy, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, land tenure, late capitalism, lockdown, mass immigration, megacity, meta-analysis, microplastics / micro fibres, military-industrial complex, Naomi Klein, negative emissions, ocean acidification, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, out of africa, phenotype, planetary scale, planned obsolescence, retail therapy, rewilding, social distancing, supervolcano, tech billionaire, the built environment, Thorstein Veblen, TikTok, Torches of Freedom, Tragedy of the Commons, universal basic income, urban sprawl, zoonotic diseases

Making hydrogen through electrolysis using nuclear power is called pink hydrogen, and there is also blue hydrogen, which is made from fossil fuels using carbon capture and storage. But since that technology is also far from being developed at scale, hydrogen as a whole remains a solution with considerable limitations. A Global Witness report from 2022 showed that a ‘first of its kind’ blue hydrogen plant in Canada was emitting more greenhouse gases than it was capturing. / Hydro power Hydro power plants use falling or fast-flowing water to create electricity. According to the International Energy Agency, they provided 17 per cent of the world’s electricity in 2020.

Southeast Asia on a Shoestring Travel Guide by Lonely Planet

active transport: walking or cycling, airport security, Alfred Russel Wallace, anti-communist, British Empire, call centre, car-free, carbon footprint, classic study, clean water, clockwatching, colonial rule, flag carrier, gentrification, Global Witness, Google Earth, Great Leap Forward, haute cuisine, indoor plumbing, Kickstarter, large denomination, low cost airline, Mason jar, megacity, period drama, restrictive zoning, retail therapy, Skype, South China Sea, spice trade, superstar cities, sustainable-tourism, the long tail, trade route, urban sprawl, white picket fence, women in the workforce

Cambodia’s most important national parks, all of them threatened by development and/or deforestation, are Bokor (Click here), Botum Sakor (Click here), Kirirom (Click here), Ream (Click here) and Virachey (Click here). Environmental Issues The greatest threat to Cambodia’s globally important ecosystems is illegal logging, carried out to provide charcoal and timber, and to clear land for cash-crop plantations. The environmental watchdog Global Witness (www.globalwitness.org) publishes meticulously documented exposés on corrupt military and civilian officials and their well-connected business partners. In the short term, deforestation is contributing to worsening floods along the Mekong, but the long-term implications of deforestation are mind-boggling.